Social Media and Project Management in South Africa

This week it was my privilege to be interviewed by Jerry Ihejirika, a project management blogger from Nigeria in his new series called “Project Management for Africa”.

According to Jerry I’m one of the most active African Project Managers on Twitter (@virtualpm) and for that reason as well as my passion for project management, he chose me to interview, using Twitter. I thought it was an innovative medium to use to conduct the interview and a good example of the power of social media to promote our profession.

Below is an extract of the interview that I wanted to share with my community too.

When exactly did you venture into project management and what informed your decision?

I’ve been in the project management profession since 1999. I’m an accidental Project Manager, and I love working with teams and the satisfaction of achieving goals.

As someone who is passionate about project management, what’s the best project management advice you’ve ever received?

From both advice and my experiences: “Always be planning, always be communicating, and always build relationships.”

What’s the level of awareness of project management in South Africa?

In South Africa, there is a growing level of awareness and appreciation of project management as a professional designation. We have a Body called SAQA (South African Qualifications Authority) which has officially recognised project management as a professional designation with career path. It’s also required by corporate employers for a Project Manager to have a PMP (certified) status, especially when applying for senior roles.

Is there any recognized national PM body in South Africa to help promote and advance Project Management in the country?

Yes, Project Management South Africa, or PMSA, representing project management practitioners across all sectors. They have monthly meetings in major cities, a biennial national conference, national printed magazine; we also have PMI chapters whose members meet monthly.

You’re one of the advocates of social media in project management. Do you think social media has a role to play in project management?

Yes, and for different reasons. Some of the benefits of social media in project management include improved collaboration, cost savings, best practice sharing, and networking.

How do you think social media can be utilized to promote and advance project management in Africa?

Through our project management blogs; sharing of project success stories; creating LinkedIn interest groups; leveraging Twitter, podcasts, videos, Google+, and PM Flashblog initiatives.

How would you rate the level of awareness of project management in Africa?

Project management as a designation will contribute to the development of career paths; and also through promoting continuous professional development. In South Africa, we have a national conference by end September with theme: Growing project management in Africa. (See events page for more details.)

Wow, that’s good, and there’s also a national conference in Nigeria by September tagged “Project Management Development in Nigeria” being organized by ProMaCon.

That’s good for raising the awareness of value of project management in Africa.

What advice would you give to a Project Manager who’s planning on incorporating social media in his/her project management profession?

For use of social media on projects, you need a social strategy that’s specific to your organisation’s business objectives, challenges, and culture. You also need to have an adaptable, step-by-step, ongoing formula to bring social media into projects. You can also use social media to build your professional project management career by having a strategy with tactics to communicate on each social media channel.

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How to Prevent Project Failure with Pre-Mortems

By Bruce Harpham

Project failure is a constant threat. When a project fails on scope, quality or timeliness, the credibility of the project manager is threatened. Delivering the project is the acid test of project manager success. That means we need to understand how to prevent project failure.

project pre-mortemThis article is about one strategy you can use to prevent project failure, pre-mortems. Using the pre-mortem approach is a positive way to harness skepticism and negativity in the work place. Rather than silently enduring complaints from project members, the pre-mortem brings concerns into the open. The pre-mortem also creates a safe space to share project opinions.

Trust is a critical component to a successful pre-mortem session. If your project team has had negative experiences in the past, that fact needs to be taken into account.

The project manager sets the tone for the session. At the beginning of the session, say that challenging ideas are welcome. Otherwise, critical threats to the project’s success may never be discussed. With that context, let’s discuss how to run an effective pre-mortem session.

Run a Pre-Mortem Meeting in Five Steps

Follow these five steps to run your pre-mortem session. If you are new to the process, be patient with yourself. Implementing a new idea can feel uncomfortable at first.

Note that the pre-mortem is designed to be used in the early stages of a project. Applying this practice late in the game is akin to providing a vaccine to a terminal patient: timing matters!

#1 Provide the Project Plan

In order to provide meaningful feedback, your project team and stakeholders need background. Whether you have a fully developed project charter or a short PowerPoint deck, share what you have with the team. For the best results, provide the project document to the team a few days before the pre-mortem meeting.

Tip: For purposes of the pre-mortem, it’s better to keep the project plan brief.

#2 Introduce the Pre-Mortem

In an effective pre-mortem session, each person contributes ONE idea. By asking each person to focus on a single idea, they will be forced to prioritize the most significant challenge to the project. I recommend giving five to ten minutes to consider the question and make a few notes.

Tip: If your team has good experience with brainstorming, then you can build on that point. Pre-mortems and brainstorming both rely on openness to new and challenging ideas.

#3 Record Project Failure Factors

Go around the table and ask each person to share their project failure factors. During the listening stage, focus on listening to the comments. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the comments later. The only reason to make comments during this step is clarify how the failure factor works.

Focus the discussion on major problems that could destroy the project’s chances for success. Here are some examples to consider:

  • Vendor Failure – A vendor fails to keep their commitment to deliver software by an agreed date.
  • Project Sponsor Behavior -The project sponsor departs the firm to retire or take a role at a competitor.
  • Lack of Feedback Failure -Employees refuse to provide useful feedback during testing because they fear process improvement will cut employment.

Tip: Appoint one person to serve as the scribe. Their role is to capture all of the ideas and send out minutes after the meeting. Appointing one person to this task signals the importance of the pre-mortem.

#4 Evaluate Failure Factors

Following the pre-mortem meeting, start the evaluation process. Use two evaluation criteria to measure the failure factors.

Let’s use the example of a delayed delivery from a vendor as an example.

Likelihood: XYZ Vendor has delivered 18 of the past 20 software projects on time. The likelihood of late delivery on the current project is low.

Impact: Failure to receive the software package from XYZ Vendor would cause the project to miss the delivery deadline. The impact rating is high.

Assessment: One of the two criteria is rated as high so this problem requires further attention.

#5 Escalate Most Critical Problems to Project Sponsors

From time to time, it makes sense to seek assistance from the project sponsor. For large contracts with vendors, your sponsor may be the accountable executive for the vendor.

In any case, schedule a short meeting with the project sponsor to discuss the greatest threats to the project. Bring at least two possible solutions to the meeting so the executive has ideas to consider.

About the Author: Bruce Harpham writes on project management training at Project Management Hacks. His professional experience includes leading cost reduction projects at financial institutions. He earned a Master of Information Studies degree at the University of Toronto.

Agile Project Management Certification

The purpose of this article is to look into what PMI-ACP means and to provide you with information outlining the exam requirements, the exam content, and what you need to do to maintain your PMI-ACP certificate once you pass the exam.

What does PMI-ACP stand for?

PMI-ACP-ExamPMI-ACP is the PMI® certification that “recognizes an individual’s expertise in using agile practices in their projects, while demonstrating their increased professional versatility through agile tools and techniques”. (Project Management Institute).

In other words, once you pass the PMI-ACP, you are then considered a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner.  Passing the PMI-ACP Exam indicates to employers and others both inside and outside the Agile Community that you have demonstrated  experience working on Agile projects, and knowledge of Agile practices, principles, tools, and techniques.

Secondly, how can you be sure if taking the PMI-ACP Exam is the right step for you? First you need to have the desire to become a PMI-ACP. Next you need to verify that you meet the PMI-ACP certification requirements in four areas:

  • educational background,
  • general project experience,
  • Agile project experience,
  • training in Agile practices.

Certification Requirements

For educational background you need to have a secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree or global equivalent).

In the area of general project experience you need at least 2,000 hours (12 months) of general project experience within the past five years. In the area of Agile project experience you need to have at least 1,500 hours (8 months) of experience working on project teams that specifically used Agile methodologies within the past three years. Keep in mind that you cannot count the same hours or projects towards general project experience that you do for Agile project experience.

Finally, in the area of training in Agile practices you need to have at least 21 Contact Hours. A Contact Hour is considered one hour of formal education, in this case formal education in Agile practices.

Once you have all of your general project and Agile project hours documented, and you have obtained your 21 contact hours, you are then ready to start your application to sit for the PMI-ACP Exam. You can complete the application online at www.pmi.org, or download a PDF copy of the application, fill it out and then submit it by mail. If you select to apply online you will have 90 days to complete the application. If you have already earned your PMP® or PgMP® credential then PMI has already verified you have fulfilled the 2000 hours of general project experience requirements to take the PMI-ACP® Exam, and this requirement will be waived.

PMI-ACP Exam

Now that you know what PMI-ACP stands for and what the requirements are to take the exam, what should you expect when it comes to the exam? The PMI-ACP Exam consists of 120 multiple choice questions that need to be answered within three hours. There are two areas of questions on the PMI-ACP® Exam. Half of the exam questions cover Agile tools and techniques, and the other half cover Agile knowledge and skills. Additional information on what is specifically covered on the PMI-ACP Exam can be found in the most current copy of PMI-ACP® Examination Content Outline. An excellent resource for studying toward the PMI-ACP Exam is the Agile Prepcast.

Once you take and pass the PMI-ACP Exam, you will need to focus on maintaining your certification. This is accomplished by obtaining at least 30 professional development units (PDUs) during your certification cycle, which is three years and starts the day you pass the PMI-ACP Exam.

A PDU is earned for each hour spent conducting activities in one of two divisions; education or giving back to the profession. You can earn all 30 PDUs with educational activities, but are limited to 20 PDUs per cycle for the giving back to the profession category. All activities in either category must be within the specialized area of Agile project activities in order to be counted towards maintaining your PMI-ACP certification. If you are already a certified PMP® or PgMP® you can claim Agile project activity PDUs toward maintaining your PMP or PgMP credential. So you still only need to earn 60 PDUs in total in three years, not 90. And remember that all PDU hours you earn towards your PMI-ACP certification must be in the area of Agile project activities.

Obtaining your PMI-ACP certificate demonstrates to others your knowledge of Agile practices, tools, and techniques. Make sure you understand PMI’s most current requirements to qualify to sit for the exam prior to starting the exam application process.

Project Manager – How to Integrate Social Media with your Projects

When considering social media for use as a communication tool on projects, there are many things to think about:

  • the purpose of using social media to manage projects
  • the benefits of adopting social media on projects
  • best practices when integrating social media with projects
  • privacy and security concerns
  • which social media channels to select
  • challenges in the workplace

Project Management SocialThis can be quite over-whelming. The purpose of this article, is to answer some questions about social media for project managers and to direct you to good resources for more information, education and implementation.

A fellow project management blogger, Tony Adams, summarised it very well when he said:

“social media is about investing the time and energy into developing long-lasting, personal relationships with your network.”

This applies whether we want to position ourselves as Thought Leaders or to connect with our project teams and stakeholders.

Let’s look at the questions that people need answers to before they will consider social media for projects.

How do you manage the information overload?

Too many communication tools can result in more interruptions and therefore more distractions, so you need to think about how to manage the various streams of information that social media tools open up to you in order to avoid information overload. It is a matter of trusting your team members and not having to monitor all conversations that are going on.

When it comes to instant messaging, you can store the output from chats. Your IM tool may have settings that sends the chat to you as an email after the session ends, so check if this is turned on and use it if it is available. These can then become project documents and can be stored and archived in the same way as meeting minutes.

Then there’s the matter of email (present on all projects) and then adding more social media channels on top of that. Consider using social media channels as pull communication where teams need to visit the project site in order to find and share project information that would benefit all. And publish the messages that are discussed on the social site, because people often need to hear/see the same thing several times before they believe it; so using several channels to repeat the same (consistent) message is appropriate. Don’t create confusion by saying different things on different channels.

What about the security implication concerns that many companies have?

Most people have smartphones with internet access and they can access social media whether the company allows it or not. It is better for a company to monitor and control access through policies and education by training them about the purpose of using selected social media channels.

Manage security by using tools that you can host in-house behind your firewall so they are not available to external audiences e.g. Yammer, Wikis. Also use tools that enable you to export your data when you need to or when the project is over.

However, if you cannot address security concerns adequately, don’t use social media tools if it doesn’t make sense or puts you in breach of agreements or policies.

How will you activate project managers to integrate social media onto their projects?

PM Social

Based on a better understanding of what platforms are available and how to use them for projects, you can determine and select the most appropriate tools to bring social software onto your projects.

Then make social media part of your communications plan and use it consistently with your team members to achieve the expected results.