Lessons Learned

Today I met one of my friends and he told me that he saw my blog and he tried to leave comment but he can't because there is many restrictions to write a comment , this was a good and bad surprise for me , the good thing that now only I come to know why there are very few comments in my blog and the bad thing is I discovered that many of people tried to write comments but they can't because of this restriction.
The first think I did once I open my blog is to remove this restriction in order to open for the comments.

This what we call it in Project Management " Lessons Learned" , when you make a blog try to remove this restriction form the comment setting.

All my best wishes

PMI Kuwait Yahoo Group

Five years back when I started the coaching and training business I was trying always to contact my trainees before, during and after the course in order to give them a real value and also to trace what is the course impact in their professional and personnel life and I consider this as important as the course itself. My Aim is to move the training industry one step ahead and focus more on the trainees himself more than the material or the class or anything else.
The Real value of Project Management Training coming from the best practice and sharing knowledge between practitioners.

For all my Project management courses I initiate a group for only my trainees called PMIkuwait@yahoogroups.com, I'm trying to make a small and closed community in order to help my trainees to master the Project Management knowledge and also give a chance to all of them to know and help each other to become a project management gurus , learn from others, announce my new free workshops and seminars, share templates and Q&A, try to help our friends to solve their problems and so on .
I'm thinking now to open the group for others in order to increase the contribution under one condition which is we will be very selective in adding a new member.

Passed My PgMP Exam

It is my pleasure to announce that I passed my PgMP (Program Management Professional) exam yesterday (27 April 2009). Thanks GOD

The PgMP credential recognizes demonstrated experience, skill and performance in oversight of multiple, related projects that are aligned with an organizational strategy.(www.pmi.org)

The PgMP exam is quite tough and it needs a good preparation plus program management experience

I need to share with you my experience about the PgMP exam, the exam questions it was subjective and very tricky, I think more than 90% of the exam was situational and scenario based questions.
My advice in order to prepare yourself for the exam is to do the following:-
1 - Read the Program Management Standard at least 4 times.
2 - Study the PgMP exam specification.
3 - Use PgMP questions and answers to enforce the concepts.
4 - You may have some questions need calculations so you need to know EVT , CPI , SPI
5 - If you are not sure about the answer try to use the avoidance technique (avoid the wrong answers first).
6 - Try to manage your time in the exam.
7 - You need to train yourself to concentrate for 4:00 hours and keep your focus.
8 - Keep in your mind that you are program manager not a project manager.
9 - Your Program management Experience is the key success in this exam.

Best of Luck

I finished my 11th. PMP Certification Exam Preperation Class in Kuwait

I started delivering the Project Management Courses since 5 years back and for last year I delivered about 11th. PMP classes and 12nd PMP exam workshops beside my work as a PMO Manager and project management consultant.
I delivered this course to trainees from more than 50 companies in different fields and sizes.

In fact I learned a lot from my students through the discussions in the class.

Thanks GOD for his given to me and also for let me descover this given which is training skills.

The good things in the training are first, I'm learning from my students more than what I had learned from anywhere else. Secound, The real experience that I'm getting every day from my work , best practices from the standards and case studies and discussion with practitioners are most important assist for me. Third, I feel success in every time one of my students call me to say that he passed the exam and since I expecte 3 to 4 pass the exam every week I feel success day after day.

I advice others to discover they givin and try to improve it and sharpen his/her eadg.

Project Management Office in dingerous

In the last 10 years many organizations start to have a Project Management Office to support their projects. this concept was accepted in many organizations.Many consultations companies was working on that and make a good success stories in many companies , the budget was not the issue the only thing is to have a PMO to control the project and to have a sustaines in the company business.
Many of freelancer consultants like me started convince the companies to have a PMO with a methodology , processes , templates and tools to manage the projects and programs. It was a great idea at that time but now after the crises the first department in dangerous is the PMO because it is cost the companies and since there is no projects so there is no need to have it .
This what happened in many companies, but some smart PMO managers does another initiative in order to keep the PMO , they change the PMO objectives from managing the project to managing the change in the company strategy , it is realy a good idea but still they are in denger because if they are not able to manage the change it will be more desaster not only in the PMO but also in all the company.
Consultants and professionals needs to change the message from deliver the projects on time , on cost on scope and on quality to be another message like manage the change , effectively manage the company resources, achive the strategic plan, ....
The PMO managers have to change the message imediately to match the current situation , there are many other business opened in the market due to this crises like Mearging companies, reevaluate the assets , Audit , change management , restructure, ... all these issues need a project management services in order to do it.
I don't think that the old model of the PMO will work in this crises we need to find another objective for it to save the organization's resources and to pass this crises safely, I think this is our responsibility now since we consider ourselves as Project management gurus, even if we didn't face a crises like this before still we are able to study and see how can we manage this crises , our aim should be save the company not only the PMO because the PMO will be nothing if the company closed.
I don't know if I'm right or wrong .. Please comment

PMP Certification

Many of IT professionals now looking for PMP certificate in order to enhance their management skills and to have a prove that they gained the necessary knowledge to mange projects.

From my experience the guys who are working in IT field become PMP certified more faster than others who are working in other fields. I think this related to the nature of IT guys in collecting Professional Certificates and because they are familiar with Q&A and study.
The constrictions engineers who decided to become PMP they only face one problem which is they forget how to study hard and answer questions but from my statistics in more than 200 trainee I discovered that the fresh graduated engineers with experience less than 5 years can pass the exam faster than experienced project managers.

In my classes I found mix between IT , Business , Construction and others . I realized that the most matured field in project management is construction field and this because of there are many parties involves in the construction projects like construction company , consultant office, owner , government,.... but in IT projects the governance is not that tough. So I don't find a problem to deliver the PMP course to construction engineers althow I'm an IT guy specialy when I come to the schedule, cost , procurements, quality but I found some confusion that happen to IT people when we are taking in Risk , Quality, HR, Procurements, cost and I think this because they didn't practice it before like construction project managers.
Anyways still the IT professional pass the exam more faster than others.
This is my personnel opservation and I'm waiting some comments in this regard.. Mohamed Khalifa

PMP Fourth Edition Training in Kuwait

The next course will be my 11th. PMP course in Kuwait since Jan 2008, this course will be in PMBOK Fourth Edition , I had just finished my first PMP course on Fourth Edition in 15 March 2009 and this one will start in 18 th. April 2009.

I enjoyed delivering the new edition of PMBOK and i consider the fourth edition as the best standard that PMI developed. there are a lot of issues that was missed in the previous one like stakeholder analysis and gathering requirements. In my previous classes i was distributing some whitepaper regarding the stakeholder analysis and customer requirements specifications (CRS) as a supplementary material to my PMP course but now it become a part of the new standard.
the only thing that i feel it need some more clarification is regarding the Enterprise Environmental factors because it was allows input in all the previous standard and it was not ever come as output but in the PMBOK fourth edition it come as output from some processes.
Also there is not enough questions and answers for the new version but the exams also will not be change 100% , the change will be about 25% and this will not effect the exam's taker much.

PMI-SP Certificate

Last Month I cleared my PMI-SP certificate and I became the first one in Kuwait who cleared this exam.

The exam is quietly easy and the questions are direct not like PMP or PgMP exams.

Any one need any help to pass the exam he/she can contact me either through the Blog or my e-mail moh@mdkhalifa.com