Author Archives: Dave Prior

Claiming PDUs for Merlin Training

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If you are a member of the Project Management Institute and would like to receive PDUs for taking our Managing Projecs with Merlin training, you are able to receive 16 PDUs for the 2-day session. ProjectWizards is not currently a PMI Registered Education Provider (REP), so in order to receive the PDUs you will have to self-report them and list them as Continuing Education.

To claim PDUs for our class you will need to log into PMI’s website (http://www.pmi.org/) and go to the myPMI section. Once you are logged into your myPMI area you can select to Report PDUs. The PDU Category to select is Cat B: Continuing Education. Then click the Next button and enter the Program Title:  Managing Projects with Merlin, the dates of the class you took, and 16 hours for the number of hours completed. You can select each of the Process groups. For Industry, just select your industry since Merlin applies to all of them.  If the class you took was given in the U.S or Canada by ProjectWizards, Inc., our Provider Name is ProjectWizards, Inc.  the business address is 80 Pine Street, Floor 24, New York, NY 10005. The URL is  www.projectwizards.net.

If you have taken the class outside North America, or with one of our partners, then you would list them using the Provider Name of the organization that provided your training and include the related information that is requested.

 

Distributed Agile Teams White Paper Review

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ProjectsatWork has published a study called Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits. The report was put together by Elizabeth Harrin (@PM4Girls), who is the author of the website A Girls Guide to Project Management. The results of the research cover a lot of ground with respect to what makes distributed Agile projects work and what can contribute to their failure.  The report is very insightful and definitely worth the time it takes to read. While some of the findings may seem like common sense, knowledge workers in the IT space (myself definitely included) seem to possess a remarkable capacity for periodic loss of grip to that tether.

My favorite part comes at the very end during the summary of recommendations. Number One on the list is:

Don’t act like your project is co-located – pay the tax for distribution.

This is one of the most simple things that so many of us forget when we are working at a distance. I believe this applies whether you are working down the hall from someone, or across the globe… there is a price that has to be paid when you are not sitting in the same room. With the transparency that Agile offers, this tax becomes far more obvious. There is no doubt that distributed teams provide a number of benefits, but those benefits come at a cost. The reason (IMHO) so many people struggle so much with distributed is that they keep thinking that the ride is free … which it theoretically could be… unless you actually want it to work.