Last Friday, along with 15 of my Maven colleagues, I sat the new Management of Portfolio (MoP) qualification. OGC are about a month away from launching their latest best practice management guide for identifying, prioritising and planning all the projects and programmes needed to achieve the organisations strategic objectives.
The guide will form the basis of a course and there will be a chance to sit a Foundation qualification and later in the year a Practitioner qualification. It is aimed at all those involved in the selection and delivery of business change initiatives including: members of management boards and Directors of Change; Senior Responsible Owners (SROs); portfolio, programme, project, business change and benefits managers.
Taking the exam reminded me how important it is that as trainers we repeat the instructions, help people stay calm and provide as much exam technique as possible to help people cope under these stressful situations.
I cannot believe how many mistakes I made on my application form, because although I thought I was really concentrating, a large part of my brain had gone into ‘panic mode’. The mistake that made my colleagues laugh the loudest was that I couldn’t even get my name right – I wrote my husbands name instead of mine!
Taking the exam itself was stressful as I never feel I can give as much time to each question as I want to, because I am worrying that I have not got enough time. I should have worked out how many minutes I had for each question and stuck to it which would have helped.
One thing that I do at the start of every exam that I do is to write a quick list on the question paper of the processes, or definitions or roles and responsibilities that I think I might need before I start answering questions. This reassures me that I do know what I am talking about and gives me something to check my answers against, particularly if I am starting to doubt the answer or it’s a sequence type answer where I need to get the information in the right order.
We won’t get our results until later this week, so wish me luck, and I hope it gives you some comfort to know that your trainer has suffered just as much exam stress as you are going through!
Showing posts with label APMG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label APMG. Show all posts
Monday, 10 January 2011
Friday, 17 July 2009
Maven Trainers talk about PRINCE2®:2009 (Part 1/6)
We’re today celebrating a couple of weeks of successfully delivering PRINCE2®:2009 training courses.
All the while, we were out and about the Maven Training Centre asking some of our fabulous trainers to give us their views and opinions on it – this has become the “Maven Training Vox Populi on PRINCE2:2009”.
A series of six sessions, the first one, “Why has PRINCE2® Changed?” is available for you NOW!
The next five ones will be published on this blog, one per day, next week. Watch this space!
All the while, we were out and about the Maven Training Centre asking some of our fabulous trainers to give us their views and opinions on it – this has become the “Maven Training Vox Populi on PRINCE2:2009”.
A series of six sessions, the first one, “Why has PRINCE2® Changed?” is available for you NOW!
The next five ones will be published on this blog, one per day, next week. Watch this space!
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Benefits Realisation, Programme Management, Project Offices and all that jazz…
My Michelle Rowland, Associate Trainer
At the last the APM Group’s 7th annual Best Practice Showcase I attended several ‘Birds of a Feather’ sessions. Most of these covered subjects with which I was already very familiar such as ‘Benefits Realisation Management’ and ‘What’s wrong with your Project Office’. I also went to a session on ‘Tailoring MSP to transform performance’. What I found most interesting was that for me there was ‘nothing new’. I had hoped to glean a snippet of information or insight as to how to apply these methods that I had not thought of before, but in fact came away with the feeling that I knew at least as much as the other ‘experts’ in the room. A comforting thought!
I went to two interesting sessions, one on Portfolio Management – again nothing new but the speaker Craig Kilford, the author of the OGC’s guidance on the subject, was very entertaining and is definitely worth going to see if you can. You can download the guidance for free at the moment as a PDF file, if you are interested. In future, the OGC are considering producing it as a full blown book which will be available to buy.
The second interesting session was on the similarity between MSP and the new PRINCE2 2009 – ‘PRINCE2 and MSP joined up’, as presented by two of the authors of both guides. They focused their energies on looking at the Principles and how they have a similar ethos and presented the following picture, which I thought might be of interest:
Purpose
On PRINCE2: Business Justification
On MSP: Leading Change; Envisioning; Communicating
Focus
On PRINCE2: Productions
On MSP: Benefits
Flexibility
On PRINCE2: Tailored to suit
On MSP: Delivering a coherent capability
Governance
On PRINCE2: Manage by stages; Manage by exception; Roles and responsibilities
On MSP: Remaining aligned with corporate strategy; Adding value
At the last the APM Group’s 7th annual Best Practice Showcase I attended several ‘Birds of a Feather’ sessions. Most of these covered subjects with which I was already very familiar such as ‘Benefits Realisation Management’ and ‘What’s wrong with your Project Office’. I also went to a session on ‘Tailoring MSP to transform performance’. What I found most interesting was that for me there was ‘nothing new’. I had hoped to glean a snippet of information or insight as to how to apply these methods that I had not thought of before, but in fact came away with the feeling that I knew at least as much as the other ‘experts’ in the room. A comforting thought!
I went to two interesting sessions, one on Portfolio Management – again nothing new but the speaker Craig Kilford, the author of the OGC’s guidance on the subject, was very entertaining and is definitely worth going to see if you can. You can download the guidance for free at the moment as a PDF file, if you are interested. In future, the OGC are considering producing it as a full blown book which will be available to buy.
The second interesting session was on the similarity between MSP and the new PRINCE2 2009 – ‘PRINCE2 and MSP joined up’, as presented by two of the authors of both guides. They focused their energies on looking at the Principles and how they have a similar ethos and presented the following picture, which I thought might be of interest:
Purpose
On PRINCE2: Business Justification
On MSP: Leading Change; Envisioning; Communicating
Focus
On PRINCE2: Productions
On MSP: Benefits
Flexibility
On PRINCE2: Tailored to suit
On MSP: Delivering a coherent capability
Governance
On PRINCE2: Manage by stages; Manage by exception; Roles and responsibilities
On MSP: Remaining aligned with corporate strategy; Adding value
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Self-awareness – Best Practice in action
By William Franklin, Client Relations Director at Maven Training.
Yesterday saw 750 people register for the APM Group’s 7th annual The Best Practice Showcase. Held at the QE11 Conference Centre next to Houses of Parliament, the juxtaposition of an industry constantly seeking to evolve and adopt Best Practice in project and programme management was stark when placed alongside the current MP expenses scandals rocking UK politics.
Alan Harpham, as Chairman of the APM Group, gave the delegates and exhibitors a multi-cultural welcome that reflected some of the many countries now adopting PRINCE2® and other Best Practice products. After that, delegates entered a whirl of their own as they tried to find the first of many 'Birds of a Feather' sessions planned throughout the day. This possibly led to the early negative feeling of personal project management capabilities (see later) as many got lost and ended up in the wrong sessions. That said, the sessions themselves were well delivered on the whole with limited 'plugging' of individual organisational capabilities.
From the marketing perspective, the opportunity to hold in-depth conversations with delegates was limited as many were hurrying between Birds of a Feather sessions. Maven Training was particularly innovative in capturing delegates’ views by asking the following question: "Does your organisation run an EFFECTIVE project methodology?" with the only answers possible being YES or NO. By getting delegates to address this question up front we were then able to take the temperature of the industry. As mentioned earlier, the initial confusion over format, combined with uncertain expectations of what the day could deliver led to 67% of respondents in the morning session answering NO. After lunch we started to see a swing towards 50/50 as delegates started to see that their existing knowledge base when benchmarked against others in the industry was in fact quite strong. However, at the end of the day, the final balance of those that had confidence in their organisational methodologies was 38% with regular comments being "...but my skills and those of my team are very strong".
So what subjects were of highest concern to delegates? Interestingly enough, there was little interest in the updated PRINCE2® (2009) with many delegates recognising this was purely an evolution rather than structural change. At the top of the list of interest was a desire for implementation services from companies that had the breadth and depth of capability to deliver methodologies, irrespective of source of the method. Maven Training was therefore delighted to be able to showcase our new Wheel of Delivery (see below) where irrespective of the client maturity or project stage, they could benefit from a range of scalable implementation services.
An additional delegate request was for the three Birds of a Feather topics we spoke on to be delivered directly to clients at their offices around the country. While an unforeseen outcome from the sessions, we agreed to a small number of additional sessions to be included in our Project Health checks that clients seek from Maven Training.
Overall, the 7th Best Practice Showcase delivered what it set out to – an opportunity for experts in the industry to share experiences and learn from each other to continue the development of Best Practice with project and programme management. We look forward to seeing you all next year.
The Wheel of Delivery™
Click on the image to enlarge it
Yesterday saw 750 people register for the APM Group’s 7th annual The Best Practice Showcase. Held at the QE11 Conference Centre next to Houses of Parliament, the juxtaposition of an industry constantly seeking to evolve and adopt Best Practice in project and programme management was stark when placed alongside the current MP expenses scandals rocking UK politics.
Alan Harpham, as Chairman of the APM Group, gave the delegates and exhibitors a multi-cultural welcome that reflected some of the many countries now adopting PRINCE2® and other Best Practice products. After that, delegates entered a whirl of their own as they tried to find the first of many 'Birds of a Feather' sessions planned throughout the day. This possibly led to the early negative feeling of personal project management capabilities (see later) as many got lost and ended up in the wrong sessions. That said, the sessions themselves were well delivered on the whole with limited 'plugging' of individual organisational capabilities.
From the marketing perspective, the opportunity to hold in-depth conversations with delegates was limited as many were hurrying between Birds of a Feather sessions. Maven Training was particularly innovative in capturing delegates’ views by asking the following question: "Does your organisation run an EFFECTIVE project methodology?" with the only answers possible being YES or NO. By getting delegates to address this question up front we were then able to take the temperature of the industry. As mentioned earlier, the initial confusion over format, combined with uncertain expectations of what the day could deliver led to 67% of respondents in the morning session answering NO. After lunch we started to see a swing towards 50/50 as delegates started to see that their existing knowledge base when benchmarked against others in the industry was in fact quite strong. However, at the end of the day, the final balance of those that had confidence in their organisational methodologies was 38% with regular comments being "...but my skills and those of my team are very strong".
So what subjects were of highest concern to delegates? Interestingly enough, there was little interest in the updated PRINCE2® (2009) with many delegates recognising this was purely an evolution rather than structural change. At the top of the list of interest was a desire for implementation services from companies that had the breadth and depth of capability to deliver methodologies, irrespective of source of the method. Maven Training was therefore delighted to be able to showcase our new Wheel of Delivery (see below) where irrespective of the client maturity or project stage, they could benefit from a range of scalable implementation services.
An additional delegate request was for the three Birds of a Feather topics we spoke on to be delivered directly to clients at their offices around the country. While an unforeseen outcome from the sessions, we agreed to a small number of additional sessions to be included in our Project Health checks that clients seek from Maven Training.
Overall, the 7th Best Practice Showcase delivered what it set out to – an opportunity for experts in the industry to share experiences and learn from each other to continue the development of Best Practice with project and programme management. We look forward to seeing you all next year.
The Wheel of Delivery™
Click on the image to enlarge it
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