Planning Your Personal Development

Advertisement [Score hundreds of PDUs through July 31]( with this exclusive Project Management Professional (PMP)® training bundle from LearnSmart. This package has 35 contact hours and over a hundred PDUs to help you pass and maintain your PMP® certification. Just $199 through July. [Get it now]( [Contact Us](mailto:contactus@projectmanagement.com) [About Us]( [Update Profile]( July 12, 2017 How should you focus your personal development? Plus, what are employers looking for with your credentials? Also in store: the battle between agile and governance, a communication strategy and help with feedback. Our Knowledge Shelf explores a project breakdown, while our Topic Teasers look at digital badges. Our blogs help your SWOT analysis and better your business case. And a reader asks about your toughest interview questions in our forums! Advertisement [Project Management In An Agile World: Clean up on aisle 9]( Most IT and PMO organizations use waterfall and agile methods to manage work—but project governance, visibility and transparency become lost. This mess of disconnected teams, process and info can be corrected with a rich integration between your agile and PPM tools. [Read this paper and fix the mess!]( "Laughter is an instant vacation." - Milton Berle []PM HEADLINES [Broader or Deeper: How Should Your Development Grow?]( With the increasing business focus of project management, many PMs are wondering how they should focus their personal development. Should they go broad, or should they go deep? [What's Important to Employers When It Comes to Hiring PMs?]( You want to expand on your knowledge and professional credential; you are thinking the certification route is the way to go. Which will best add value to your career? [Can Governance and Agile Get Along?]( Traditional testing practices are the hands that slow agile teams to a stagnant, waterfall state. Testing itself isn’t bad or anti-agile...but how you think about testing can make or break your agile success. [Your Communication Strategy: The Key to Motivating People]( We need people to feel important, involved and included in every phase of the project from the beginning. The way to keep them motivated is to have an effective communication management strategy. [The START Feedback Framework for Managers]( Feedback is an essential tool for project and functional managers to achieve a desired outcome or state. When done correctly, results can be achieved quickly. This article elaborates on a feedback framework that can guide the delivery of the feedback to maximize its benefits. "Be smart, but never show it." - Louis B. Mayer SPONSORED ANNOUNCEMENTS AND SPECIAL OFFERS Ready to Build New SPL Skills? Strategic Project Leadership® offers your Best Value PDUs with [Dr. Shenhar's Winning Program](. Based on latest research, SPL is extending traditional methods with three critical elements for success: Clear Strategic Vision, Inspiring Leadership, and Adapting to Complexity. Programs start on July 24th. [Register TODAY!]( [The Future of Higher Education]( Higher education institutions that fail to understand and adapt to the current paradigm shift will face serious difficulties in the future. They must make profound structural changes in providing quality education and services to their students by adapting quickly and effectively to this new world marked by technological advances. [Project Estimations: Theory vs. Reality]( Your cost, schedule and resource estimates need to be realistic. But for this practitioner, that wasn't always the case in an effort to garner sponsor and customer approval. What would you do in this situation? [Welcome ProjectsAtWork!]( ProjectsAtWork has joined forces with ProjectManagement.com! Combining resources, expertise and energies, we will be more focused than ever on delivering the content that helps you get things done in the real world. Check out all the content new to our community! [PMXPO 2017: On Demand!]( Thanks for making the 10th edition of PMXPO our biggest one yet! If you missed any of the sessions—like our keynote by Alison Levine, the first American Women's Everest Expedition Team Captain and a bestselling author—you can still catch them on demand until July 27! And be sure to take our [attendee survey]( to tell us what you thought! []KNOWLEDGE SHELF [The Million Dollar Email: How Haste, Expediency and a Rush to Impress Led to a Project Breakdown]( When economic downturn presented challenges to the insurance industry, a leadership council was convened to lay out a strategy to improve operational effectiveness. But the tension between urgent business needs and the project discipline required for appropriate action led to unintended results. The mission of [Knowledge Shelf]( is to help project professionals advance our practice by sharing their experiences and viewpoints. It is comprised of practitioners from a wide range of fields, covering both popular and niche topics. From lessons learned and case studies to opinion pieces and articles, this platform gives a voice to peers new to our online community, and allows for longer form contributions. For more information on how to submit your own article, please see our [Editorial Guidelines](. []TOPIC TEASERS Welcome to Topic Teasers, which tests your managerial prowess every other week! In Vol. 98, we look at [The Need for Digital Badges](: Question: I have a question about how I can best advertise my certification status with PMI. I know I can put that I am a PMP®, PMI-PBA®, PMI-ACP® or list other types of similar achievements I have earned. However, it becomes quite cumbersome to try to try to type them in or get them to show up on social media. Also, I hear two different stories about whether or not to use the registration mark ® after the letters. Is there a better way to do this? A. Certifications attached to your name are inappropriate when using social media. Readers disregard them since you can just make them up whether or not you actually hold them. A better choice is to find some way in the message, text or tweet to reference your skill in project management through specific examples and your delight in passing the exams. B. The fine print you sign when applying for the Project Management Institute exams states that you are not allowed to announce your certifications in any way other than on a business card. The print on the cart must be Helvetica 12 point and the color of the type must match exactly the color of the PMI logo. C. What you need is a digital badge, which is a web-ready version of a certification. PMI has asked a third-party to distribute these to you. This allows you to get recognition on the internet for the accomplishments you have achieved that can be verified. Learn how to access these, if you qualify. D. What you need is a design team to create a cut-and-paste logo for your business that shows your name and photo with all of the credentials you have earned. Place it into web locations you use by associating it back to your own personal computer through a URL created by a custom site that shortens links. Check the answer [here](, and [send in your own question for consideration]( []THE PM POLL Is there a question you've been itching to ask? [Create a poll]( today to get some PM help from your peers! [Q: How effective is EVM (Earned Value Management) in measuring project performance and progress?]( - Very Effective - Effective - Less Effective - Not Effective - What is Earned Value Management? - Other TRAINING SPOTLIGHT The online Master of Science in Agile Project Management is focused on the Agile methodology. Agile is an established approach used to cope with change and uncertainty that is increasing in popularity across many sectors, particularly technology. [Learn More]( [Search for your solution on our Training Finder]( []BLOG IT Voices on Project Management by Linda Agyapong and Marian Haus The SWOT framework is a very useful analytical tool for identifying risks and opportunities. Marian looks at [Best Practices for Moderating a SWOT Analysis](. Then, Linda asks, [What Defines Project Success?]( The Money Files by Elizabeth Harrin One of the things Elizabeth gets asked the most is, “Can you help me with my business case?” It wasn’t always like that, but she thinks these days, project managers are getting more and more involved with writing business cases. Get help with her [Business Case Resource Roundup](. The Human Side of Project Management by John Morgan When a lawn maintenance worker wanted John's business, he made a number of key mistakes in his brief interaction that we can all learn from. As we take a look at these mistakes and some ways to avoid them, remember that we all have a number of various “customers” to whom all of these things apply. Read how [Gaining Customers Takes More Than Proximity](. Wish I Had Me When I Was You... by Laura Barnard Laura was thinking about stakeholder management and how we ought to be speaking in terms that our stakeholders understand to help them engage with the project. We have to make it about them. [Lessons in Stakeholder Management from Mr. Rogers]( has more. Servant Leadership: Serve to Be Great by Mike Frenette In a volunteer organization, servant leadership is indeed required. It is required in other organizations too, but in one that has fluidity with its board and its committees, even more so. Mike offers more in his [latest entry]( (plus, he has ice cream...). Game Theory in Management by Michael Hatfield Although obtaining a certification can be quite the challenge, it’s not an end point. It’s really more like the starting line that, like an [Oval Race Track](, has the starting and finishing lines at the same place. People, Planet, Profits & Projects by Richard Maltzman [What Moves You?]( As project managers, we use tools such as earned value to forecast the future. But sometimes we just have to read the news. A couple of recent news stories about the end-of-the-line for the internal combustion engine recently caught Richard's attention. The Critical Path by Marjorie Anderson We hope that you are taking a mid-year pause to reflect on the success that the first half of 2017 has brought you. We also hope that you have had the chance to catch up on a few things happening in the community and profession. Marjorie shares [July Community News You Can Use!]( []Q & A Did you know that help is just a click away? Our discussion forums give you access to the ProjectManagement.com community: more than 500,000 experienced minds and growing! Take advantage of their expertise...your question could be posted here for even more exposure to our vast readership. Pose your question today or stop by to help out other members in need of advice, including these recent and ongoing discussions on... [Tough Interview Questions]( "What are the best or most difficult PM interview questions you have heard, received or used?" [Born a PM?]( "To what extent is project management effectiveness based on personality type versus level of training?" [Speaker Advice]( "I'd love some advice from people on what criteria/factors should I use to determine speaker and workshop fees? How do I build my network and get clients? Any and all suggestions on how to just get started (even if I need to do some speaking engagement pro bono) would be appreciative." [Improving Lessons Learned]( "I'd love to hear what other PMs do to make lessons learned accessible and useful across multiple projects and PMs." [Leadership Training]( "I have found that most PM training is focused more on managing a project rather than helping to develop project managers' leadership skills. Most leadership development programs are designed for traditional 'people leaders' and many project managers don't have direct reports. As a consultant and professor, I'm curious as to whether this is an industry-wide gap or opportunity." "What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are." - George Eastman []PREMIUM PICKS Did you know that we have an extensive library of PDU-earning webinars? Here's just one of the latest valuable offerings you can check out! [Change Management Tips for Project Managers]( If the project manager wants to implement lasting changes, this webinar will help to understand these processes and offer a glance over formal tools and methodologies to manage all the complexity involved. As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome. How can we make your experience better? Is there something you haven't been able to find? Something you want to see that we don't have yet? [Let us know](mailto:cameron@projectmanagement.com). We'll handle it. 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