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.

Now the hard work begins

As mentioned in a post yesterday, I had applied to the PMI to be accepted to take the Risk Management Professional certification.  Today I received confirmation that my application has been accepted and that I can now embark on the long journey of preparing for the exam.

I have read a few blog posts about the exam and it seems that I "should" be in a good position to take the exam, as I have only recently obtained the Project Management Professional qualification.  People have been saying that all the hard work in preparing for the PMP certification should put me in a good position to take the Risk Management exam.

New contract extension

As a contractor I usually start the negotiations for my contract, 4 weeks prior to the end of a contract.  Very few potential clients would even entertain my CV if I was not immediately available.  This is the game of being a contractor.

My contract finishes in two days time. 

I am pleased to say that my contract has finally been extended, with just hours remaining.  I know I am working for a large client, with many contractors and I report into a very busy Project Management Office, but this is cutting it fine.