Want to work well with several soft locations, urls?

Want to work well with soft locations, urls? Here are a few tips:


1) Bookmark frequently visited sites: Intranet sites, internet sites for bank, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, any YouTube links, etc. Every time, you do not have to key-in from your memory. Saves time and mood. If you are a reader of online pages, book mark the last page read before closing the session and open it from bookmarks when you want to resume. For effectiveness, when you bookmark the latest page, you should delete the old bookmark.


2)Save frequently accessed network locations:
Frequently accessed status reports, knowledge base, project plans, etc may be at various locations and may be confusing to remember the full paths. Save the most frequently accessed locations in a text file and save it on desktop. When you want to see the folder or file, just copy and use it.

How I leverage email application for planning and tracking

I am a software delivery manager (in a Fortune 500 company) working with a 15 member team at onsite and offshore. I work with various stakeholders from technical teams, testing (QA) teams, senior management, customers. At times, it is challenging to track various action items in the context of receiving more than 150 emails/day. I have provided a few steps that I am following and I am able to prioritize and track the action items successfully. 

Follow up on Items

1. While going through your emails, identify the items where you or your team need to respond and set them as action items or todo items. After identification, you will see all the action items in the email tool.

If you have to provide response, please do that. If the action is from a team member, please ensure that someone responds. If nobody responds within 1 day, follow up with the team for response.  Upon providing the appropriate response (and recipient is ok with the response), remove the flag “todo” or “action item” for that item. (When I say appropriate response, I mean that the response is complete and sufficient. We should not get questions on what is missing in our response.)

2. For important items, defects, acknowledge the receipt of email even when you do not have complete answer in hand. Follow up and keep recipients posted as you/team get clarity.

Set up Appointments/Reminders  

3. If you need a reminder to do something (like registering for an event or completing timesheet before a due date or doing payment, checking for readiness of a deliverable, etc), set up a gentle 15min reminder in your calendar to yourself , preferably, 1 or 2 days prior to the expected day of action. That will give you enough time to take action or follow up.

Set up Discussions in Place of Emails

4. If there are more than 5 email responses on the same subject and they are still flowing-in, set up a discussion. That will reduce the email traffic and turnaround time.

Inform on Non-Availability at Work

5. Vacation, planned short term leave, sick leave, out of office: In general, provide a heads-up by sending an email to stakeholders well in advance.  Please set up out of office message in the emailing tool clearly (to work during your absence) indicating the start date of out of office and end date of out of office, point of contact in case of any urgency, etc. As soon as you are back, remove the message.

6. Coming late, going early to office: Drop a note to colleagues, managers and other important stakeholders that you will be coming late or going early. Provide tentative time for arrival or leaving. When you reach office, you may reply all informing that you are in.

7. Public holiday for offshore team: Drop a note to stakeholders in advance about the holiday (which is not a global holiday) at offshore with clear details on the schedule, any plan to continue the business/work, etc. Send a meeting invite for 15 minutes to be scheduled for early morning as a gentle reminder that should occur on the holiday we wanted prior information on, on the previous day. This is for information to manage dependencies among the team members.

How I overcame my frustration...

Since last 2 years, I was aspiring for growth in position and I am not able to make it this year as well. Temporarily, I was impacted by the feeling of despair, all others with similar capabilities growing up and me going towards dead end. My immediate responses to this feeling were:

1) I spoke to my wife and my mentor: They gave me enough support to revert to normalcy. They suggested on spending time on solution options rather than on the problem.

2) Got kind advice from my friends: They inquired on what is life with promotion and life without promotion, what is my mission in life, what keeps me motivated. I informed that as long as I help customers resolving challenges and proceed towards improvements in delivery, I will be satisfied at work. As an individual, I informed that I give the highest importance to happiness of myself and family. 

3) Spent time in devotion (bhakti) to take fullest control on myself.  ISKCON temple visits helped me.

Analysis that went in answering questions brought a feeling that I did not lose anything that is worth worrying. Within 4 days, I regained myself. 

Realized that promotion is important and at the same time, also felt that it is not life and death issue. 

Here is my action plan that I executed:

1) Focus more on learning, enhancing skills. Allocate time for reading and excel is doing things in a great way. Get mastery.

2) Spend time on devotion or any activity that brings happiness to your spirit. In my case, it is praying God, temple visits, reading Gita. Trusting God to the fullest is yielding results. Living value based life is the outcome.

When I look back now, I have got more knowledge and happiness than what would have come from promotion. I believe that every thing happens for a reason...

I am myself now...happier...cheerful.

My PMP certification journey - Exam Date: 21 March 2014

The objective behind my PMP is professional learning and accomplishment. My journey to PMP started on 2 Jan 2014 as a new year resolution. My reading material was (soft copies):

1)      Rita Mulcahy’s “PMP Exam Prep 8^th Edition”

2)      PMBOK Edition 5

Important Tips for Exam:

1)      Before you start the exam, write the formulae on yellow papers given by Prometric centre. Your 4hr clock won’t be ticking at that time.

2)      Take breaks judiciously as the clock won’t stop during break time.

3)      Do not spend too much of time on 1 question (not more than 2mins).

4)      Keep doubtful questions for review (by clicking Mark button) after giving the best answer. Do not keep anything unanswered. Do not mark more than 15 questions for final review.

5)      Do not wait till the last second for submitting the answers. When it shows 30 -50 seconds time left, click on “Go” button for submission.

Important areas to be covered based on my exam paper:

1)      Spend a lot of time on exercises for cost calculations (CV, SV, CPI, SPI, EAC). I saw close to 20 questions on this. If you have good understanding, you will get all answers correct.

2)      Close to 15 questions were asked on handling scope changes (situation based) – No straight question, all of them need thinking

3)      Around 10 Project closure tasks – Lessons learnt and sequence of activities involved

4)      Around 10 questions on team formation stages  (Form-storm-Norm-Perform-Adjourn). Situation is given and we have to mention the stage.

5)      Around 15 Risk response strategy questions - Situation is given and we have to provide the strategy being applied.

6)      Around 6 questions on number of communication channels. Sometimes, the count of total channels is given; we have to identify stakeholders from it.

7)      Around 8 questions on estimation (Gamma method) using optimistic, most likely, pessimistic estimates

8)      At least 6 questions on conflict resolution- Situation is given we have to identify which strategy was applied

9)      2 questions on tools and techniques, 2 questions on outputs, 2-3 questions on decision tree

There are at least 60 questions based on formulae, graphs. We have to maximize our score there.

My Preparation-Planning, Execution, revision:

Both Rita Mulcahy and PMBOK have 600 pages each to read and based on my first chapter reading, I planned to spend 2hr/day during week day, 6 hr/day during the weekend.  I repeated the following cycle for 3 times:

I used to study Rita’s book for 2 hr after office, preferably 1 complete chapter. For bigger chapters, I used to take 2 to 3 days. The chapter wise exams in Rita’s book are very tough and excellent to test our knowledge of understanding. I never missed them. I recorded my test answers in a flat file with chaptername, date, %wrong answers as file name.  When we do the second and third round reading, we will know if we are improving or stuck. If score is < 70%, we need to read the chapter 1 more time. If score is coming down, time to read the chapter one more time.

All important points, formulae and calculations, notes on questions where I went wrong in tests were written in an exclusive PMP notebook. On the next day, I used to read the same chapter in PMBOK, which gives the inputs, tools and techniques, outputs clearly and explains them in detail whereas Rita’s way is covering all the important points from understanding and exam perspective. I registered myself in http://pm-prep35.com/chaptertests1.aspx (free portal) and took free test after PMBOK chapter. This site covers all the concepts from PMBOK in chapterwise tests. Read ethics from Pmi site.

Notes were taken from PMBOK too. I used to put a heading like “Rita   3 – Project Integration Management” or “PMBOK  3 – Project Integration Management” to distinguish the source of information in my notes. However, the notes for the same chapter from both the sources will be one after the other in my notebook. During the free time at office, I used to continue reading to crash my schedule. Notes should be frequently read. It was very handy during last 10days before the exam. I read the notes during my journey to office in train for a week.

Mock tests: I spent last 10 days before the exam on mock tests. Some of them are too simple or 2 liner questions. Some of them have so many typos and I lost interest. I do not advice looking at mock tests from a lot of non-standard/non reputed sources. It will create confusion and may result in loss of confidence.

Rita Mulcahy’s chapter tests are at the same level as exam questions. Take the test seriously. The more you read Rita’s book, the better it will be for the exam.

Actual Exam hall Experience – Before the test:

1)      Went to the exam hall at 1230 PM, 21 Mar 2014 and my appointment was 1 PM. They asked me to keep every thing except passport in a locker (not even pen, water bottle were allowed).

2)      My pockets, ankles, wrists checked and then, I was scanned. I was given a 4 yellow papers, 2 pencils.

3)      I was allowed in at 1242 PM,21 Mar 2014. The machine already had my name and test’s start screen opened up.

Actual Exam Experience:

1)      A tutorial with 8 to 9 screens appears. I did not wish to work on it. I was not sure of the impact of skipping the tutorial. Prometric guy suggested me to read it rather than skipping it.

2)      One question comes at a time.  Click on Mark for questions you want to revisit.

1)      There will be 200 questions, 4 hr time. We can take a break for rest room, water, etc. Our 4hr clock won’t stop. Every time we re-enter the exam, checking and scanning happen.

2)      Prometric center organizers keep doing the rounds.

3)      In first 2 hr, I answered 83 questions. Only in the last 15 minutes, I have got less number of questions to answer than minutes left. I spent 4 mins to review my answers (marked questions). When I had 30 second still left, I submitted my responses by clicking “Go” button.

4)      After submission and before result, it will take us to a survey, which will take 5 mins. Then, exam result will appear.

5)      Prometric center will give the result in print out form. I my case, I passed.

Post exam step:

Within 24 hrs (consider only business days), we will get congratulations email and we can download soft copy of the certificate. By the way, I passed the exam in my first attempt.

Final word:

Do not lose focus on the exam. Starting the journey, executing with a proper plan and completing the preparation are critical. If end date is not frozen, you will not take the test. If you have good preparation (plus an element of luck), you will clear the exam. If you cannot clear it, the experience will definitely give you a very good understanding of the pattern so that you can clear it next time. It is a win-win situation. (I am not considering the 2^nd time exam fee. When PMP is important, we do not have to worry about money spent. Plan with that contingency). 

All the best.

My travel planning secrets

"Did you keep the medicines?", "Where are the hand napkins?" these are the standard questions I ask after we start the journey. Getting "no" answer is a surprise and definitely influences the mood at that time. I always wish that I do my best so that we do not forget important things.

Now, we are making progress. Here is what we have done:

1)      Based on past experience on similar kind of travel, identified all the required items. Created a checklist. Our personal checklist has the following:

Medicines, Chewing gum, eatables, spoons, hand napkins, diapers for kid, water, dresses for all 1 pair/day, extra pair of socks, comb, perfume, camera + batteries + charger, mobile charger, towels

We never had experience of forgetting money, credit/debit cards, etc. Hence, I did not include in the checklist. Please note that my checklist is in a page in my diary that I carry. So, it’s easy to reference.

Before travel date, we go through the checklist items to ensure that they are purchased,  are at home and part of travel baggage. Placement of items in appropriate bags is important. Food and medicines in cabin luggage is a bad idea. Anything that is required while traveling should be kept handy (like camera, snacks, water, etc)

2)      During the course of journey (round trip) and stay, based on experience, we update the checklist. For instance, in our recent trip, we forgot taking comb and we updated the list.

This approach has been helping. No blame game and we are happier with our travels. More we involve the family members in travel, the better are the results due to buy-in. Short comings will result in checklist item changes. In very less time, we will become great planners of our own travel. Agree with me?

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