A Project Manager's Diary

That is the question! As implied by its name PMP (Project Management Professional), to obtain such a certificate you should be a professional in the field of Project Management… To my surprise, almost 95% of the people I met holding this certificate know nothing about Project Management!! They think that studying for this certificate and obtaining it means they are professional, although they should be professional to deserve such a certificate. I understand that one of the prerequisites to get this certificate is to have some practical experience in the Project Management field. But for some odd reason, I discovered that the people I am talking about, which are a majority in the field now, don’t really have experience, some of them are even fresh graduates… I once had a very aggressive argument with a “ kid ” in my team, and by the word “ kid ” I am referring to his age and his attitude in despising my knowledge and experience due to his ignorance, he was very aggressive and arrogant...

Sometimes referred to as the Triangle of Horror… where the PM tries his best to maintain his balance while walking on the very thin project rope between this triangle and the Project Constraints Triangle (time, cost & scope). The triangle sides represent: The Team, The Client and The Management Every side of this triangle is obsessed by the sole idea that the other two sides want him dead, i.e. the team thinks that the client and the top management want him dead and vice versa. Usually a good PM gets lost while trying to maintain this triangle in good shape to keep all parties satisfied and happy while making them think they are his first and only priority to get out what is needed from them for the sake of the project. From my perspective, this is a much harder balance to keep rather than maintaining and managing the Project Constraints Triangle… It highly depends on people, their culture, maturity level, and on the PM’s ability to understand this and deal with it in a ...

They took some time to plan for the trip… They drew the road map, bought some food and beverages… and got equipped with the necessary tools… They were going to travel through the woods to draw the magnificent scenes which were observed by their neighbors early this year… This wasn’t their first trip together as a team, though they were all excited… The bus driver was in charge for making the big decision in the trip while taking care of the travellers’ team while of course driving the bus and communicating daily with his supervisor in the station. The map was clear, the weather was very well studied, though the bus driver expected to pass by some pitfalls in the road as there were some reparation in the way. He reported this to his supervisor and requested to take some more supplies just in case they have to camp one or two days more, but the supervisor refused “ the trip has to be completed on time and the painting should be ready for sale by the end of the week ” Anyways, ...

By experience -the bad one of course- I discovered that the famous Project Management triangle is missing a very important containing circle… The Strategy Circle . The Strategy Circle is my simple explanation for many of the catastrophic situations projects end up with. I totally believe that this should not happen and that Strategy exists to set goals and directions for the benefit of organizations and accordingly for the benefit of projects and teams. Unfortunately, I witnessed many cases where it was exactly the opposite. I was an eye witness of the failure of many projects and sometimes companies because of misunderstanding the meaning of Strategy and how to use it to bring companies to success. Some companies bankrupted because of this! De-formation Effect The Strategy Circle is sometimes surrounding the Project Management triangle and thus imposing pressure on it and suppressing it and some other times it is pushing on the triangle from the inside and thus inflatin...

In addition to the very well-known techniques/lifecycles for project management, I found out that a new technique emerged lately. This new technique highly depends on performing project tasks and phases in a reverse non-organized order! This is known as the Project Baxecution (Project Backward Execution) concept. It embraces the following practices in addition to the Surprise factor which is a common factor at the end of each stage: Deliver the project before getting the requirements (because it is not important!) –> Client is surprised Test the project after receiving some of the requirements –> Testing team is surprised Develop the project after reviewing bugs –> Development team is surprised Plan for the project –> Top management is surprised Gather the project’s requirements –> Client is surprised again Restart the project in the same order, kind of Spiral Development model –> Everyone is surprised!! Just to clarify, this is a stand-alone technique that ...

I am a Project Manager and I love my job… I am a project Manager and I love doing my work! I am nothing more but a Project Manager amongst many others. I got married to my work (not job) after a great love story which started from early childhood ( coming soon ). I started my career as a Software Developer in the late 90s, then held many positions in the field of Software Development, some were promotions and some were kind of additional assignments due to my performance. Among the positions I held are Developer, Team Leader, Project Manager, Project Leader, Senior Project Manager, Senior Project Leader, Program Manager, Business Analyst… though I was dreaming about becoming an Architect! But seriously the job I loved the most is Project Management. The things I hated the most in my early years were politics and economics/finance, which both became the core of my daily work for some years now! 94% of my experience was built by working in Software Houses as a vendor/provider and ...