PMP and CAPM Certification Exams are Changing on July 31, 2013

PMI® has announced the official dates for changing PMP® and their other certification exams. For PMP® particularly, it means that you can take the exam for PMBOK® Guide, 4th edition, until July 30, 2013. If you take the exam ON or AFTER July 31, 2013, it will be based on PMBOK® Guide, 5th Edition, which is due for release on Dec 31, 2012.

The Holes in your PMBOK Guide

The PMBOK Guide is the bible for the PMP exam. But is it really perfect? Many project management experts have done research on this subject and highlighted issues, both from practical and academic perspective, with every edition of the Guide. I'm not an expert by any means, and see myself more as an avid student of the subject. In this post, I'm highlighting some of the potential issues in the PMBOK Guide®, 4th Edition (the Guide).

This post is rather unusual in the sense that I'm not providing you the 'answers'. Instead, I'm posting the questions and seeking answers from you. These questions have been collected over the past 3 years, and many of them were sent to me by PMP and CAPM aspirants from around the globe.

BrainBOK ITTO Explorer - Process Interactions and Data Flow Mapping

BrainBOK ITTO Explorer is an innovative and unique tool that aims to bring the entire PMBOK Guide to just one screen. Since its launch on Dec 25, 2010, nearly 13,000 PMP and CAPM aspirants around the world have used it to fastrack their certification process. It has received awesome reviews and feedback. However, I'm a firm believer that the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. As I mentioned in my previous post, recently I realized that even though the ITTO Explorer was great at getting your head around the PMBOK ITTOs, it was missing a very crucial component of the PMBOK Guide - process interactions and data flows. In this post, I'm going to walk you through some of the enhancements in BrainBOK v6.0 that overcome those limitations and literally bring the PMBOK to one screen.

BrainBOK ITTO Explorer - Inspiration, Idea and Need for Improvement

Recently I came across an extremely talented and skilled professional, who was preparing for PMP certification. He came across as a very unique individual, a person with a very visually-oriented mind, who learned things by drawing charts and diagrams. He produced some exceptional work - network diagrams to map PMBOK project management processes and their interactions, charts to help learn formulas, and drawing to explain complex concepts. I was very impressed and inspired by his work. In this article, I'm sharing how the conversations I had with him inspired me and gave me new ideas to further improve BrainBOK.

Certified ScrumMaster Training - Review and Feedback

As I mentioned in the previous two posts, I attended a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) class in Singapore, last week. The course was conducted by GoodAgile, and offered by ISS, NUS. One of my colleagues had taken that class back in February and had recommended it to me. It's a 3-day course and is approved for 70% subsidy under the CITREP program of WDA, Singapore. In this post, I'm sharing my experience and feedback on the course for people who might be interested to take similar courses in Singapore and abroad.

Scrum - from a Skeptic's Point of View

Three days of training and a certification exam later, I'm now officially a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). The 3 days spent in the class was time well-spent. It was a good and refreshing experience for me. In the previous post I said I was a skeptic. So, have I bought into Scrum now? Do I like it? Do I think it works? Is it better than the traditional waterfall (or SDLC) approach? Read the full article to find out.

Agile or Fragile? 10 Lessons from Day 1 of Certified Scrum Master Training

Today was the first day of my 3-day Certified Scrum Master classroom based training here in Singapore. Usually I'm better at self-learning and not quite bullish on classroom training. But when I started reading about Agile practices in software development, and Scrum in particular, I had more questions than answers. I was very skeptical of it and almost sure that this stuff wasn't going to work on my projects. I wanted to challenge it and bring up my problems to an Agile protagonist. Well who better than the co-founder of Scrum Training Institute, Pete Deemer. When I came across Pete's class I decided to register for it, primarily for one reason - asking lots of questions (and hoping to get answers which would convince me one way or the other).

Since I don't have a separate blog on Agile practices, I decided to use this space to document my learning. Considering that I just came out of the class, this stuff is fresh off the oven. It also means that it's somewhat "raw", probably not as well drafted, or as comprehensive, or as well-researched, as some of the other articles that you'll find on this blog.

PMI Fact File - Stats through February 2012

Here's a snapshot of the PMI Fact File (Source: PMI Today Magazine, April 2012 edition):

Statistics through 29 February 2012

Critical Path Forward Pass Calculation - Start at Zero or One?

One of the most frequently asked and hotly debated topics about Critical Path calculation by PMP aspirants is whether to start the forward pass calculation at Day Zero (0) or Day One (1). This has been a topic of debate on numerous forums and blogs, including this blog. But I've not seen a conclusive answer anywhere. The PMP exam prep guides and courses add to the confusion by following different approaches. Some authors prefer to start at zero, some start at one. Each approach yields different results.

While practically speaking, it may be a matter of choice, but from the exam point of view, there's only one correct approach. So, what is that correct approach? Should we start the forward pass calculation at zero or one? Today I'm going to answer that question for you, support it with evidence and put an end to this debate. So, are we ready to dive in?

We Failed You, Sorry [PMP Exam 2011]

John visited a doctor for a regular health checkup. After examining him, the doctor asked him to go for a medical test. John took the test next morning, and the report was delivered to him in the evening. As he was reading the report, his body started trembling, heart started pounding and senses went numb. He had tested positive for a dreaded disease. He called the doctor, but the doctor wasn't available. After spending a long night in agony and distress, he got a call from the lab next morning. They told him that the report he received actually belonged to another patient!

Imagine if this had happened to you. What would be your reaction? It would not be an exaggeration to say that something similar happened to dozens of PMP® aspirants last week.