PMBoK

[Pete OHanlon]

You might want to look at this book[^]. It covers PMBOK to some quite mind numbing depth.

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[Rage]

Yep. We have one in our organisation which is derived from the "official". It is a Project Management Book, gathering several practives to help defining processes for the organisation's project management. In a few words, it is a document in which every project manager can find the process he needs to complete their projects in a way that would both help the project and the organization, and have the work products come out and the project develop in a way that the organisation can go through audits and certifications without problems. If you have specific questions, feel free to mail me, I am actually a process developer.

[V 0]

Maybe if I have the job ;-) (thumbs up :thumbsup:)

V.
Stop smoking so you can: Enjoy longer the money you save. Moviereview Archive

[kryzchek]

I'm actually going through the PMBOK online course from Boston University right now. I have about 2400 pages of PDF text to read, containing fascinating copy such as: "Project Integration processes provide the methodology to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate all the processes and activities defined in the five Project Management Process Groups." I'm lucky if I can read 200 pages of that drivel a day.

[Rage]

kryzchek wrote:

PMBOK online course from Boston University

Why would you need something like that ?

[kryzchek]

It's the "Certificate in Project Management" course, which almost exclusively references the PMBOK guide.

[Rage]

So basically, you will get a certificate stating you know what project management is after swallowing the PMBoK and some other slides ? Mwawawa. There is no such thing as a "Certificate in Project Management". IMHO Managing project is something you can do or you can't, it is not a skill you can learn. And the worst way to get project manager is attending a course. (Mind it, I am talking generally here, no offense meant at you.)

[kryzchek]

I currently employ zero project management techniques. My boss says "we need the ability to do XXXXX. Go do it." I invent some sort of turn-around time which is almost always grossly inaccurate, and I get started working. Halfway through the project, we discover we forgot that in order to do XXXXX we first need to do YYYYY and we'd also like to add ZZZZZ. And with that, the two week estimate turns into 6 months of actual work. I don't expect the class to make me an expert in project management, but in my case, my boss and I NEED some sort of foundation of standards and practices. Also, I now have a developer working under me, so it will only compound our problems if he's just wandering about without some sort of real direction as to what tasks he's to accomplish.

[Rage]

You may actually want to look into CMMI[^], in your case in the process areas of Level 2. This will bring much more to your organisation (and to you) than the garbage provided by the Boston University course. And the book costs about 40 bucks, in comparison to the $3995 of the certification.

[kryzchek]

Too late now. The course is paid for and I've already got about 25% of it completed. But I can certainly supplement the class with additional books and practices.

[Robert Surtees]

45 is the "When do you need it?" response to the "How long will this take?" question which yields the desired answer: ProjectDuration = WhenNeeded - TimeNow. It's the easiest to implement as it works independent of resource availability, cost, and general reality.

[Brady Kelly]

Sounds like some kind of beer.