Risk Management Exam Prep - The beginning

Last week, I successfully passed my PMP Risk Management Professional Exam.  I started studying back in November, by reading the PMBoK Guide chapter on Risk Management and then read a few blog articles on the experience people had and the lessons learned from taking the exam.

Over the Christmas period, I had a break from study to enjoy the time with my family, so my mini-plan failed to go according to plan.  At the beginning of January, I started to plan for the exam, which included understanding the exam structure and discovering the cheaper options for exam preparation material. 

I Passed my PMI Risk Management Exam

Just a quick note to tell the world that I successfully passed my Risk Management Exam today.  I will say that it was fairly difficult, but not as difficult as the Project Management Professional Exam that I took (and passed) in September last year.

The exam consisted of 170 questions, all related to Risk.  There was a fair amount of HR and Communication questions in the exam, but the majority was around the 6 Risk Processes and the emphasis seemed to relate to the Risk Response Planning Process.

I studied hard, but not hard enough, for my strict self-imposed standards.  I will give you a break down of my study plan and the resources that I used in a new post over the weekend, but for now, I just wanted to let the world know I PASSED !!

I am not overly happy at the moment, I am still waiting for it to sink in.  I feel drained and am looking forward to going for lunch with my wife.

More soon...

Exam Booked !

If you read this blog, you will know that I have been studying over the last couple of weeks for the PMI Risk Management Exam.

I have been reading through the PMBoK guide Risk Management Knowledge area, and have been supplementing my study with a Risk Management Book by Abdulla Alkuwaiti.

iGoogle Replacement?

I have been using iGoogle for many years and like the home page it have.  I have, and use, only seven widgets on the home page, which I find very useful.

The main use is the excellent bookmarks widget, which allows me to categorize my bookmarks and easily find (and add) bookmarks.  Even my children know how to use this widget.

Lack of posts

Wow - it is already the 31st January.  2013 seems to be going as fast as 2012 flew by.  Before we know it, it will be Easter holiday time.

This month has been a short month for me.  I worked through Christmas, into the New Year and then took a week of holiday with my family to Centre Parcs.  I have been back at work for three weeks and have not made time to write a blog.  I have two poor excuses.  The first is that I am trying to study for the PMI Risk Management exam.  The second is that I am tracing my family tree.  Both of these tasks have eaten away my free time in one way or another.

As for the family tree, I had previously gone way back along both my Wife's and my own family tree, but I had branched out in all directions.  I decided that I needed to start over and concentrate on the male side of the lines, following the 4 grand fathers that we have.  I will create a blog post next month with a short summary, but I warn anyone looking to start their own tree that the process is time sapping and very addictive.  I find it very therapeutic, which is a welcome break after studying and working hard.

January 2013 - Project Update

As you may know, I am working for a Japanese Corporation as a Project Manager to migrate all of our users from Lotus Domino email to Exchange.  This sounds quite a simple project, and it would be, if there were not so many dependencies on a corporate email infrastructure.

For almost a year, we have been working hard to understand the dependencies, understand all of the risks, complete the design to ensure the most robust, reliable and fault tolerant system we can. 

I am from a Lotus Domino background and have more than 13 years consulting experience and I am working with a Technical Architect who has been an Exchange consultant for roughly the same period of time.  This relationship has a chemistry which is very useful to the project as we are able to compare best practices and techniques for email on a global level.  We have considerable banter regarding our own technology expertise, which is useful when discussing design issues and infrastructure considerations.

Gold Plating

Gold plating is the addition of features in a project that were not requested within the Project Scope. Project Scope Creep comes from the customer side, where as Gold Plating is introduced by the Project Team.  Gold plating can be a good or a bad thing for a project, as the customer may or may not accept the change. 

If the customer accepts the change, all is good, except that this may have cost the project some time or money. If the customer does not accept the Gold Plating, then remediation work may have to take place to back out the changes to the original scope, which will potentially cost both time and money.