Tag Archives: project management

Project Management – Top 5 Tips for Success with the PMP Exam

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The Project Management Professional (PMP) title is a meaningful designation to have because it documents a level of practice and professional skill that is vitally needed in today’s recessionary economy, and it will differentiate you from your competition – or at least, keep you on top of the competition.

Before you can get certified, you must pass a rigorous test. The test is difficult and many test takers don’t succeed the first try, but you can be among the people who successfuly pass on the first attempt if you follow these suggestions:

  1. Remember that any answer – no matter how good it may sound – that in any way suggests that an unethical “shortcut” is the right answer – is automatically, the wrong answer. Do not choose any answer that suggests that bypassing the rules and PMI principles is okay.
  2. Get plenty of rest the night before taking the test. The test is long, and it is challenging, so you’ll need to be able to think clearly as you ponder the answers – especially since several of the answers may actually be true, but the test will generally ask you for the best answer, and only one answer will qualify as the best answer. You’ll need good judgment and clear thinking to be able to pick out the best from the other good answers.
  3. Pace yourself to ensure that you have enough time to answer all the questions – and take all the time you’re allowed for the test. Review your answers to make sure that you read the questions correctly and interpreted them properly (but don’t change answers without a good reason – generally, you’re first answer is the best, unless you’ve mis-read or mis-interpreted the question the first time). If you do decide to change an answer, have a good, specific reason for doing so; e.g.: “I didn’t see the word ‘not’ in the question.”
  4. Take a PMP Prep course. This is the easiest and most effective way to ensure that you’ll be successful (however, it can be costly). These courses are generally brief 3-5 day intensives that are typically held shortly before you are scheduled to sit for the exam. One of the biggest benefits of such courses is the interaction you’ll have with the other participants and the ability to learn and understand how they would approach the situations, along with the rationales for their choices. If you can’t go to a course, buy one of the test software programs, or at least, take every practice test you can find – and clearly understand why any answers you missed were considered wrong by PMI.
  5. Remember that any answer – again, no matter how attractively they may present it – that suggests “gold-plating” (i.e., delivering more than was agreed upon) is never the right answer. Do not choose it.

If you’ve done all of the above, you should be in good shape to take the test – and to pass it on your first shot.

Good Luck!

I’m a PMP, and I’ve found it to be invaluable over the past several years; however, even the PMP is no assurance of sustained employment in this recessionary economy. It’s always a good idea to have a fallback plan, or in this case, a second income source. I’ve started working my own :

http://SK.MyIncomeAutopilot.com

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How to Prioritise Effectively

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Efficient task management is crucial for any business to run effectively – especially one which is based over the internet, as you’re rarely there in person with your colleagues to go over project management progress or discuss daily reports.

When managing significant numbers of tasks and projects, a high level of structure and organisation is essential to complete them efficiently. A process or procedure should be in place for dealing with large projects, small tasks and regular tasks. This is a much more substantial subject in itself, so let’s take a look at a really easy method of prioritising which is a necessary piece of the task management process. First of all, you should take all of your current tasks and write them down on a list. You are then going to sort these tasks into 3 smaller lists.

List A is made up of 2 types of tasks – those which are essential or time-sensitive, and those which, if completed, are going to have an immediate impact upon your business. So write down anything which you can work on right now that will have a significant impact, whether this be making money or improving your business in an necessary way, and of course, anything which has a completion date.

List B is made up of the things which have to be completed, but aren’t in any way time sensitive. An example of this would be a task like filing documents.

List C is made up of projects and tasks westernunion new york which you would like to get done, but which have no impact on your current business and can be scheduled in at any time.

Once you have your lists laid out, you will be able to clearly prioritise these tasks in a comprehensive schedule. First, consider to yourself these 2 things:

1. What tasks on your list could you automate?

2. What tasks on your list could you hand over to an expert virtual assistant?

Put these on a separate list, and deal with them first. The more quickly you’re able to do this for your A & B tasks, the sooner you can begin to decrease the contents of these lists on a weekly or monthly basis, with the final outcome of creating quite a bit more time for yourself.

For those tasks which you haven’t automated or outsourced to an experienced virtual assistant, you will need to organise these into jobs for yourself. Each job you’re going to do should be broken up into tasks, and each task should be considered as a ‘Milestone’, and each milestone would have a checklist of smaller tasks, which once all checked off, will enable the milestone to be completed.

To begin with, take each of the milestones in your A list, and then break the milestones down into checklists of jobs which need to be done in order to complete the milestone. For this process, I strongly advise that you utilise top notch online project management software to organise this enterprise – especially if you’re working with a virtual assistant, as the majority of these things could possibly be outsourced at a later date. Most online collaboration software will let you develop multiple projects so you can manage comprehensive milestones and tasks.

Once you have done that for List A – do the same for list B, and if you have time, you may want to do this for list C too, but usually the C list is set to one side for when A and B are both entirely complete.

This will of course need to be scheduled into a daily plan, and this plan must be tailored according to the amount of tasks you have and the volume of time which is available to you – but as a general rule, your work should progress steadily and everything should get done.

To plan your schedule, take twenty minutes to designate your tasks before you start each day, as this will give you specific direction to move forward and help you to have a greater feeling of achievement upon the completion of your working day.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Support the Campaign for FREE Virtual Assistance now!

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