PMBoK for 2.5 hours: an interview with Ivan Selikhovkin
Friends, I do not know about you, but we do not believe in high-speed tablets. We do not believe in "losing weight in 2 weeks at 40 kg." Damn, I want to believe, but the reality is usually against ...
And then there is a whole PMBoK ... A hefty thing like that, for large and smart corporations, as well as awkward government customers ... As it turned out, everything was not quite. In order to talk about something complex in an understandable and accessible form, you need a practitioner who took the issue down to the details, outlined the main points, placed accents and walked through the materials with a large bright marker - read here, look here, use it like this.
4 years ago, Project Management Manager (PMI PMP), author of the book “IT Project Management from Scratch in Any Organization”, Ivan Selikhovkin released a free course “Practical PMBoK for 5 days”, which today has already downloaded more than 7,000 people. However, not so long ago, Ivan went ahead and released the course “Practical PMBoK in 2.5 hours” (available for free after registration).
')
5 days - I still understand, but 2.5 hours - somehow that ... gives you weight loss in 40 minutes. :) Since Ivan and I have been cooperating for a long time, we decided to find out how it happened that the course had shrunk from 5 days to 2.5 hours. And having begun to speak, they understood that it was necessary to do a separate interview. As a result, we discussed a lot of topics:
Ivan, hello! How did you get into IT project management?
Hello!
This is such an interesting, but confusing and complicated story. Initially, I had education in medicine, in fact, I worked in medicine, and came to project management from there. The transition to project management took place in two stages. At first I got into the field of IT from medicine, and then I began to manage projects.
Accordingly, the first thing I did was to make a decision to leave medicine. This was a very difficult decision, and it was hard for me at the time. There was a lot invested in it, I studied very carefully, purposefully went towards becoming a normal, practicing doctor, but did not grow together.
If in a nutshell, in order to work in medicine, you need to feel a vocation, like many of my colleagues who have remained there - I personally did not feel a vocation. Medicine is not an extremely complicated thing, there is nothing supernatural about it. Actually, I studied well and worked, they even took me to hospitals after graduation. I became this very real doctor, to whom the nurse wipes sweat from his forehead, corrects his mask during the operation. But soon I caught myself thinking that while standing on the operation, looking into the surgical field, waiting for the anesthesiologist to conjure, I was bored.
That is, I felt some melancholy, I felt that I did not want to do this all my life. And at that very moment I realized that I had to leave medicine. There are pluses, there are minuses. I remember this decision clearly: I remember the operating room, I remember how it smelled ... And went into the sphere of IT.
Programming has always been a hobby, nothing serious at all, because when you study, you work in medicine, it is absolutely impossible to do something serious in parallel. But at the level of the hobby some funny crafts, experiments in the field of IT, in the field of programming were. And I started to relearn. It was very scary, it seemed that everything - I was already old, grown up, everyone would laugh: nothing in your life will work out.
I quickly got a job, I studied in parallel with my work, and these were the first half-steps towards management. He studied at the programmer.
I remember how I came to my first job, with zero experience. I honestly told the manager: I can’t do anything, but I really want to, I’ll try very hard. My first boss was a completely brilliant man, I did a lot because of him, I learned from him. He also came to this place of work recently, he worked literally for a month and a half and recruited people for himself. He listened to me and said that he has a lot of work, he needs colleagues, and the rest - he will help, support, you can learn. He did not deceive me, nor did I deceive him.
I tried my best to somehow get used to it, experimented, tried, studied, and he supported me in every possible way. Since the first job was related to medical IT, my background was useful - I communicated with interested parties, with comrades. The chef was not related to medicine. I had something to support him, and he waited for me to get comfortable with the things that are needed in a new place. And gradually, on the one hand, I became accustomed, something began to turn out, and on the other hand, the company where I came to began to grow very quickly.
If at first there were several people in the team that I joined, and we programmed something there, then quite quickly, in the first year and a half, there was a transition, we began to involve other contractors, there was a lot of new work. They began to interact with other providers of medical information systems, there were a lot of them, they began to coordinate them.
And here there was an effective transition to management.
I was really helped by a bunch of my medical industry knowledge and, in fact, the need to understand IT. The transition to management turned out, but it was also a very interesting and very scary moment for me, when you suddenly start to coordinate, set tasks for people who understand you IT much better - everyone in their industry, of course, understands much better. Some of them have good industry knowledge with or instead. And you need to do something with them, you need to negotiate with them, you need to organize all people with different interests, different people, different companies for some kind of result. Here, little by little here, I learned everything in this mode.
(The best report of the Stratoconf conference: I. Selikhovkin “What a good PM can learn from a good doctor” ")
And at what point did your PMI appear in your life?
In the first place of work, after about a year and a half, when I realized that the management was sucking me, I began to look for information, began to try to understand, first of all for myself, what a good manager does, what he relies on, what he is guided by. I read a lot of all the classic and wonderful things that managers usually read, where they start from. DeMarco, Brooks and others. As a standard, I remember that I tried to consider different options, stopped at PMI and began to study it for myself - for several reasons:
First, he claimed a fairly wide coverage. PMI is not only about how to develop software, but also about how to manage projects in general, how to restructure business processes, if necessary, to introduce software. Many other standards do not focus on this.
On the other hand, PMI has some intelligible things, that is, if you think you have figured out well, you can go, as I call it, “fear of getting”: try passing the exam, check, did you understand, or do you it only seems. It was also a comfortable milestone, I planned it myself, passed. At first, we used PMI between ourselves. It was quite funny how several people sat and tried to play PMI projects, for three of them they tried to write a project, build a diagram. From the outside it looked ridiculous.
And then I remember that our department has grown: first, it increased to ten people from three, and then in the end we were almost forty. And here it was no longer funny, there was already a need for some methodology, rules of the game. And the fact that we were playing in the sandbox at PMI was very useful. Already then we managed to fill the cones, to understand where it puts us in excessive bureaucracy, that it can be useful. And this experience, which at first seemed like a toy, redundant, lay down and earned straight. Very helpful. Since then, I love PMI very much, I know it and use it in my work. Something like this.
Listen, why PMI, and not flexible methodologies that are becoming more or more popular in recent years?
Well, there is no contradiction. I would say PMI and flexible methodologies. There are several reasons again. I like flexible methodologies very much, I use them on all projects without exception, along with PMI. When I tell my colleagues something about PMI, I use this term, I easily call it - PMI-methodology, this is not entirely accurate, PMI is, of course, an institute, not a methodology. Just so that we understand each other, I sometimes use this term. In particular, I refer the PMBoK standard to such methodologies as heavy.
“Heavy methodology” - is used by me as a term for internal use, I refer PMI or PRINCE2 to the same category, yet an armful of such heavy, heavy standards. I consider it subjective - I personally think that a project manager should own at least one heavy methodology. In contrast to the heavy, I take the lungs. This is all that is possible, again, all sorts of Agile and so on.
The difference is, in my opinion, that a heavy methodology, as a rule, is not necessary, but often claims to be universal: it not only allows you to manage projects. Rather, not only the development of software, but the project as a whole. Heavy methodology - yes, it is more versatile, it suits IT and not IT companies, but on the other hand, they have a high input threshold. That is, in order to master it and begin to benefit from it, you need to spend a lot of energy, unlike the flexible approaches, the same Kanban and Scrum, which can be perceived very, very quickly, during the day. And during the first week, it’s already normal bumps and a project.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the manager needs to have one heavy methodology in the arsenal, and it doesn’t matter which one. At PMI, the wedge of light did not converge. If I knew any other heavy methodology by that moment, I would use it without any problems at all. PLUS an arbitrary set of lungs.
If a manager does not support PMI with a specific set of techniques such as Kanban, such as Scrum, does not know where to push it, at what point which teams, what kind of projects it is convenient to coordinate, say, using Scrum, then it will be hard.
PMI, again, is sometimes mistakenly opposed to flexible methodologies.
In the last edition of PMBoK, if you look, there is an iterative development cycle, it is directly drawn, there is a picture. PMBoK emphasizes: work like this. PMI certification introduced by Agile and now also gives “fear” to those who want it. They are very differently treated, including me, with skepticism. But not the point. For me, PMI and Agile remained close by.
This is understandable, but what made you write down the course “Practical PMBoK in 5 days?”
Actually, this is such a very natural my motive and impulse, in general such a part of my life philosophy: I figured out something - share it. In a certain sense, it also contradicts the well-known rule “I learned how to do something well — do not do it for free”. But somehow, in my life, according to my observations, it is this approach that brings its fruits.
On the one hand, it was such a completely sincere thing when I saw that, in my opinion, I managed to figure out quite well at PMBoK. In order to do this, it took me a lot of effort. And at that time I did not see any other simple manual. Nothing that could help me to save these very forces, I did not have in my time. And when I realized that PMBoK was in my head, and that in my life, in my reality, it helps me - the natural next step on my part was to write something down, to lay out, to help someone else.
For me, this is still a magnet that will attract interesting people. This is a rather complicated story: to find interesting people in life and in a profession. There are different ways to do this, and free content, the PMBoK in 5 Days course helped me a lot. Quite a lot of people told me “Thank you!”, Some asked questions, some entered into correspondence, generated ideas. And I met quite interesting people. I think that at one time he paid off completely - if he lowered the design entropy in the world, maybe he did something a little more pleased with him - well, that's fine. So I spent the effort is not in vain.
At what point did “Practical PMBoK in 5 days” become “PMBoK in 2.5 hours”? When to wait for “PMBoK in 15 minutes”?
The idea itself was brewing for a long time. On the one hand, I wrote down “PMBoK for 5 days” when I just tried myself in something like this, in the mind of some information pieces, presentations. Since then, I have trained quite a lot of people, helped them master the same PMBoK. My ideas about how to convey this to people in a more understandable way have changed a little.
It's funny that my observation was as follows: when people listen to “PMBoK in 5 days,” it helps them understand PMBoK. But when they have clarifying questions, it is quite difficult for them to open PMBoK itself and find the answers in it, because they are accustomed to how I carry the material - in my redesigned in a simple and understandable way. But this does not necessarily help people open PMBoK and quickly navigate it.
Therefore, one of the goals that I’ve got is that, in order to put irreparable benefit to people in a more honest way, it was necessary to restructure the course so that the course was less dependent on me. For the person who listened to it, open PMBoK as a well-known, friendly book. I think it succeeded.
On the other hand, I began to explain some things, in my opinion, more concisely, with less water, not to the detriment of the material - therefore, the course volume was reduced from five classes to actually two. Accordingly, the course was renamed to “PMBoK in 2.5 hours.”
“PMBoK in 15 minutes” is hardly worth the wait. I do not think that it is possible to significantly reduce the flow of material, without losing somewhere in the sense. When I recorded “PMBoK in 2.5 hours,” there was another intention — to write down a more or less expanded open course — it now consists of three lessons — on project management as a whole. And “Practical PMBoK in 2.5 hours” is the third lesson of this course. The first two also acquaint people with what project management is all about, what light and heavy methodologies are. And already at the third lesson for those who are interested, I suggest diving into the bowels of PMBoK.
By the way, about the latest version of PMBoK, what has changed since the previous one?
There are changes. The most significant thing is that they separately identified work with customers and called it “Managing Stakeholders”. The old PMBoK also talked about this, but inside other chapters, internal processes. And here they thought that it was so important that they carried it into a separate chapter. In general, I agree, most people agree that yes, PMBoK is becoming more and more customer-oriented. He emphasizes that successful projects are not just made on time within the budget, but also solve customer problems.
The management of stakeholders was carried out in a separate area of ​​knowledge in order to emphasize very strongly.
Of the other differences ... There are quite a few minor differences that some PMBK experts may notice. But so, from the side, if I start commenting, it will simply not be clear. Many will shrug their shoulders: “So what, what's the difference?”. In general, I would say that PMBoK is becoming more verified, more accurate. Even here, the third edition at one time was so watery, reminiscent of some incomprehensible documents that I often encounter in my work. The fourth was already quite good, the fifth is just great. Few, all of the case.
PMBoK is becoming increasingly harmonized, for example, with ISO standards, with regard to working with quality, working with risks. Actually, it is striking. Of these most understandable changes, some things just disappear from PMBoK. And one such clear, very specific change - all references to the project triangle disappeared.
Wow.
People with experience, perhaps, will appreciate. It would seem that such a brand, which, in my opinion, PMBoK introduced at one time the type of triple constraint - a three-fold limitation: the time frame, the scope of work and the budget.
PMBoK generally removed the triangle, removed the picture, the triple constraint itself is no longer found in PMBoK. As I understand it, in order not to introduce managers into the temptation that I have done it in a triangle with the project. This is not the case; I still use the triangle to explain how PMBoK suggests building plans, basic plans. PMBoK has these triangle faces. If you disassemble from this point of view, much goes much easier. PMBoK itself, I repeat, removed the triangle from its pages so that the managers did not get hung up on it and did not think that if it met the triangle, then in general it was good.
Clear. Ivan, you have the most extensive experience in project management, consulting third-party projects, and training other managers. It is known that the Standish Group every year produces The Chaos Report about how many projects on average in the industry fail, how many are being done successfully. And this statistics over the past fifteen, or years, does not change much. What is the reason why changes do not occur, although there are methodologies, trainings, books? Why is that?
Good question. Probably it would be presumptuous to give him one single correct answer. I have the following considerations.
Humanity in general is poorly able to manage projects, it is quite natural.
It hasn't been doing this for a long time. Many colleagues may not agree with me, but mankind is still used to, more or less learned to regulate its activities in matters of regular management, let's call it that. For example, in the management of some production. Managing something where the uncertainty rate is low.
And project management is available where it is very difficult to build any long-term plans consistently, step by step. The environment changes too much, the goals are too vague, something else. Take that construction, that information technology, especially consulting projects, that any scientific projects, for example.
Therefore, on the one hand, the tasks are complex, and we deal with them badly. It is much easier to make plans and lead a team on this plan, clicking the whip where everything is more or less clear. Where the goal strives to change, there is no framework. This is on the one hand.
On the other hand, if you still talk about problems, I would single out two large groups. Projects are made by someone (managers) for someone (for business). From my point of view, there are problems on both sides. And managers are poorly able to manage projects, there are few professionals, and business is poorly able to play with them according to the same rules. I'll try to develop a thought.
In my opinion, a good project manager is a person with diverse experience.
Riddle, where can he get it, if life itself does not offer him his experience to diversify? But it is important, in my opinion. You can get a diverse experience, on the one hand, by changing the place of work. I do not say - to jump from work to work - but the manager, who managed different projects, in the public sector and not in the public sector, with distributed teams, and with teams that sit in the same place, is more flexible.
If we talk about software development, then in customized development or in product development, the perception of project management and the arsenal of tools and techniques that a manager can take at the right time is much broader.
Such an experience, by definition, makes the manager much more efficient compared to the option if he has been working at the same place for ten years and the environment does not change much. Managers whose ideas on project management are broad enough - a little.
On the other hand, I’ve been observing the last seven years: the demand in the market, I’m talking about Russia, I’m talking about St. Petersburg, I am sure that the same thing in Moscow, the demand for managers is very large. Even looking at the list of vacancies with the naked eye, their number, it is clear that so many professionals cannot be recruited.
Clearly, The Chaos Report is not about Russia, it’s about the world in general. But I think the problem is the same, everywhere the same.
Market applicants, not employers. It is difficult to find people with interesting multifaceted experience. For all their projects, firstly, they simply lack arithmetically, according to statistics. We get that the projects will be led by people who are not the most professional. In some places it is critical, somewhere it affects.
Very often I observe how managers themselves misunderstand managerial responsibilities, that is, many of my colleagues work in an emergency mode, including only from time to time.
At the same time, if we see a system administrator running with a fire extinguisher or a bundle of cable to “extinguish the server”, no one has the sensation: here’s a professional working! It seems that this is a dangerous madman and simply can not fix the process. But at the same time, a manager with three phones, bruised under his eyes for some reason causes many respect: here is a man who works, here is a manager in his place, here he is!
What is the difference, I personally do not understand. The manager is the person who organized the process, he has something to do, anyway. But this is not the mode in which most of my hardworking colleagues work. Not hackers - hardworking. The reasons why they do that? Without going into details - this is a lack of professionalism.
Not that I, such a professional, speak about them, but you have to be objective.
There are few professional managers on the market, on the one hand. On the other hand, this is a business attitude.
Managers scolded, now I scold the business.
Project management, a project manager for a business is a cost center. It does not generate revenue, not the seller, who can sell something for a billion and gild a business. The project manager, on the contrary, is the cost center. A person does something, walks, and we pay him money. This is outrageous for business people.
It is normal to build relationships with a project manager when the business is ready to play long and honestly. Ready to speak with the project manager in the same language, understand, listen to him. Understand that on how well the project management is built, the long-term costs and long-term business profit and other business benefits depend in the non-material area.
In fact, the Russian business, with which I have dealt with a lot, is not ready to understand.
Business plans: I want my managers to be normal, projects to perform good. At the same time, for its part, does quite a bit for this.
It is very important that the project has a normal goal, so that some of the project frameworks do not change. The classic problem that I’m talking about everywhere, it generally responds to many managers: lack of resources.
For example, you have been given 6 developers for a period of six months. Three months passed, you took two of you. They say I'm sorry - and transferred to another project. This, of course, also does not contribute to the successful completion of the project. Why it happens? Because managers and business do not know how to assess the value of the project on the shore in time, whether we are launching the project, no one is concerned with risks, as such.
But if you do not lay down the reserves and the response time to risks, costs can be up to half of the project budget.
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And then there is a whole PMBoK ... A hefty thing like that, for large and smart corporations, as well as awkward government customers ... As it turned out, everything was not quite. In order to talk about something complex in an understandable and accessible form, you need a practitioner who took the issue down to the details, outlined the main points, placed accents and walked through the materials with a large bright marker - read here, look here, use it like this.
4 years ago, Project Management Manager (PMI PMP), author of the book “IT Project Management from Scratch in Any Organization”, Ivan Selikhovkin released a free course “Practical PMBoK for 5 days”, which today has already downloaded more than 7,000 people. However, not so long ago, Ivan went ahead and released the course “Practical PMBoK in 2.5 hours” (available for free after registration).
')
5 days - I still understand, but 2.5 hours - somehow that ... gives you weight loss in 40 minutes. :) Since Ivan and I have been cooperating for a long time, we decided to find out how it happened that the course had shrunk from 5 days to 2.5 hours. And having begun to speak, they understood that it was necessary to do a separate interview. As a result, we discussed a lot of topics:
- How to get from medicine to IT project management
- Why in recent years the percentage of successful projects does not change
- Three steps to creating a project office
- What are gos.zakazchik heroic, business and mediocre
- Is there a contradiction between PMI and flexible methodologies?
- ...
Ivan, hello! How did you get into IT project management?
Hello!
This is such an interesting, but confusing and complicated story. Initially, I had education in medicine, in fact, I worked in medicine, and came to project management from there. The transition to project management took place in two stages. At first I got into the field of IT from medicine, and then I began to manage projects.
Accordingly, the first thing I did was to make a decision to leave medicine. This was a very difficult decision, and it was hard for me at the time. There was a lot invested in it, I studied very carefully, purposefully went towards becoming a normal, practicing doctor, but did not grow together.
If in a nutshell, in order to work in medicine, you need to feel a vocation, like many of my colleagues who have remained there - I personally did not feel a vocation. Medicine is not an extremely complicated thing, there is nothing supernatural about it. Actually, I studied well and worked, they even took me to hospitals after graduation. I became this very real doctor, to whom the nurse wipes sweat from his forehead, corrects his mask during the operation. But soon I caught myself thinking that while standing on the operation, looking into the surgical field, waiting for the anesthesiologist to conjure, I was bored.
That is, I felt some melancholy, I felt that I did not want to do this all my life. And at that very moment I realized that I had to leave medicine. There are pluses, there are minuses. I remember this decision clearly: I remember the operating room, I remember how it smelled ... And went into the sphere of IT.
Programming has always been a hobby, nothing serious at all, because when you study, you work in medicine, it is absolutely impossible to do something serious in parallel. But at the level of the hobby some funny crafts, experiments in the field of IT, in the field of programming were. And I started to relearn. It was very scary, it seemed that everything - I was already old, grown up, everyone would laugh: nothing in your life will work out.
I quickly got a job, I studied in parallel with my work, and these were the first half-steps towards management. He studied at the programmer.
I remember how I came to my first job, with zero experience. I honestly told the manager: I can’t do anything, but I really want to, I’ll try very hard. My first boss was a completely brilliant man, I did a lot because of him, I learned from him. He also came to this place of work recently, he worked literally for a month and a half and recruited people for himself. He listened to me and said that he has a lot of work, he needs colleagues, and the rest - he will help, support, you can learn. He did not deceive me, nor did I deceive him.
I tried my best to somehow get used to it, experimented, tried, studied, and he supported me in every possible way. Since the first job was related to medical IT, my background was useful - I communicated with interested parties, with comrades. The chef was not related to medicine. I had something to support him, and he waited for me to get comfortable with the things that are needed in a new place. And gradually, on the one hand, I became accustomed, something began to turn out, and on the other hand, the company where I came to began to grow very quickly.
If at first there were several people in the team that I joined, and we programmed something there, then quite quickly, in the first year and a half, there was a transition, we began to involve other contractors, there was a lot of new work. They began to interact with other providers of medical information systems, there were a lot of them, they began to coordinate them.
And here there was an effective transition to management.
I was really helped by a bunch of my medical industry knowledge and, in fact, the need to understand IT. The transition to management turned out, but it was also a very interesting and very scary moment for me, when you suddenly start to coordinate, set tasks for people who understand you IT much better - everyone in their industry, of course, understands much better. Some of them have good industry knowledge with or instead. And you need to do something with them, you need to negotiate with them, you need to organize all people with different interests, different people, different companies for some kind of result. Here, little by little here, I learned everything in this mode.
(The best report of the Stratoconf conference: I. Selikhovkin “What a good PM can learn from a good doctor” ")
And at what point did your PMI appear in your life?
In the first place of work, after about a year and a half, when I realized that the management was sucking me, I began to look for information, began to try to understand, first of all for myself, what a good manager does, what he relies on, what he is guided by. I read a lot of all the classic and wonderful things that managers usually read, where they start from. DeMarco, Brooks and others. As a standard, I remember that I tried to consider different options, stopped at PMI and began to study it for myself - for several reasons:
First, he claimed a fairly wide coverage. PMI is not only about how to develop software, but also about how to manage projects in general, how to restructure business processes, if necessary, to introduce software. Many other standards do not focus on this.
On the other hand, PMI has some intelligible things, that is, if you think you have figured out well, you can go, as I call it, “fear of getting”: try passing the exam, check, did you understand, or do you it only seems. It was also a comfortable milestone, I planned it myself, passed. At first, we used PMI between ourselves. It was quite funny how several people sat and tried to play PMI projects, for three of them they tried to write a project, build a diagram. From the outside it looked ridiculous.
And then I remember that our department has grown: first, it increased to ten people from three, and then in the end we were almost forty. And here it was no longer funny, there was already a need for some methodology, rules of the game. And the fact that we were playing in the sandbox at PMI was very useful. Already then we managed to fill the cones, to understand where it puts us in excessive bureaucracy, that it can be useful. And this experience, which at first seemed like a toy, redundant, lay down and earned straight. Very helpful. Since then, I love PMI very much, I know it and use it in my work. Something like this.
Listen, why PMI, and not flexible methodologies that are becoming more or more popular in recent years?
Well, there is no contradiction. I would say PMI and flexible methodologies. There are several reasons again. I like flexible methodologies very much, I use them on all projects without exception, along with PMI. When I tell my colleagues something about PMI, I use this term, I easily call it - PMI-methodology, this is not entirely accurate, PMI is, of course, an institute, not a methodology. Just so that we understand each other, I sometimes use this term. In particular, I refer the PMBoK standard to such methodologies as heavy.
“Heavy methodology” - is used by me as a term for internal use, I refer PMI or PRINCE2 to the same category, yet an armful of such heavy, heavy standards. I consider it subjective - I personally think that a project manager should own at least one heavy methodology. In contrast to the heavy, I take the lungs. This is all that is possible, again, all sorts of Agile and so on.
The difference is, in my opinion, that a heavy methodology, as a rule, is not necessary, but often claims to be universal: it not only allows you to manage projects. Rather, not only the development of software, but the project as a whole. Heavy methodology - yes, it is more versatile, it suits IT and not IT companies, but on the other hand, they have a high input threshold. That is, in order to master it and begin to benefit from it, you need to spend a lot of energy, unlike the flexible approaches, the same Kanban and Scrum, which can be perceived very, very quickly, during the day. And during the first week, it’s already normal bumps and a project.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the manager needs to have one heavy methodology in the arsenal, and it doesn’t matter which one. At PMI, the wedge of light did not converge. If I knew any other heavy methodology by that moment, I would use it without any problems at all. PLUS an arbitrary set of lungs.
If a manager does not support PMI with a specific set of techniques such as Kanban, such as Scrum, does not know where to push it, at what point which teams, what kind of projects it is convenient to coordinate, say, using Scrum, then it will be hard.
PMI, again, is sometimes mistakenly opposed to flexible methodologies.
In the last edition of PMBoK, if you look, there is an iterative development cycle, it is directly drawn, there is a picture. PMBoK emphasizes: work like this. PMI certification introduced by Agile and now also gives “fear” to those who want it. They are very differently treated, including me, with skepticism. But not the point. For me, PMI and Agile remained close by.
This is understandable, but what made you write down the course “Practical PMBoK in 5 days?”
Actually, this is such a very natural my motive and impulse, in general such a part of my life philosophy: I figured out something - share it. In a certain sense, it also contradicts the well-known rule “I learned how to do something well — do not do it for free”. But somehow, in my life, according to my observations, it is this approach that brings its fruits.
On the one hand, it was such a completely sincere thing when I saw that, in my opinion, I managed to figure out quite well at PMBoK. In order to do this, it took me a lot of effort. And at that time I did not see any other simple manual. Nothing that could help me to save these very forces, I did not have in my time. And when I realized that PMBoK was in my head, and that in my life, in my reality, it helps me - the natural next step on my part was to write something down, to lay out, to help someone else.
For me, this is still a magnet that will attract interesting people. This is a rather complicated story: to find interesting people in life and in a profession. There are different ways to do this, and free content, the PMBoK in 5 Days course helped me a lot. Quite a lot of people told me “Thank you!”, Some asked questions, some entered into correspondence, generated ideas. And I met quite interesting people. I think that at one time he paid off completely - if he lowered the design entropy in the world, maybe he did something a little more pleased with him - well, that's fine. So I spent the effort is not in vain.
At what point did “Practical PMBoK in 5 days” become “PMBoK in 2.5 hours”? When to wait for “PMBoK in 15 minutes”?
The idea itself was brewing for a long time. On the one hand, I wrote down “PMBoK for 5 days” when I just tried myself in something like this, in the mind of some information pieces, presentations. Since then, I have trained quite a lot of people, helped them master the same PMBoK. My ideas about how to convey this to people in a more understandable way have changed a little.
It's funny that my observation was as follows: when people listen to “PMBoK in 5 days,” it helps them understand PMBoK. But when they have clarifying questions, it is quite difficult for them to open PMBoK itself and find the answers in it, because they are accustomed to how I carry the material - in my redesigned in a simple and understandable way. But this does not necessarily help people open PMBoK and quickly navigate it.
Therefore, one of the goals that I’ve got is that, in order to put irreparable benefit to people in a more honest way, it was necessary to restructure the course so that the course was less dependent on me. For the person who listened to it, open PMBoK as a well-known, friendly book. I think it succeeded.
On the other hand, I began to explain some things, in my opinion, more concisely, with less water, not to the detriment of the material - therefore, the course volume was reduced from five classes to actually two. Accordingly, the course was renamed to “PMBoK in 2.5 hours.”
“PMBoK in 15 minutes” is hardly worth the wait. I do not think that it is possible to significantly reduce the flow of material, without losing somewhere in the sense. When I recorded “PMBoK in 2.5 hours,” there was another intention — to write down a more or less expanded open course — it now consists of three lessons — on project management as a whole. And “Practical PMBoK in 2.5 hours” is the third lesson of this course. The first two also acquaint people with what project management is all about, what light and heavy methodologies are. And already at the third lesson for those who are interested, I suggest diving into the bowels of PMBoK.
By the way, about the latest version of PMBoK, what has changed since the previous one?
There are changes. The most significant thing is that they separately identified work with customers and called it “Managing Stakeholders”. The old PMBoK also talked about this, but inside other chapters, internal processes. And here they thought that it was so important that they carried it into a separate chapter. In general, I agree, most people agree that yes, PMBoK is becoming more and more customer-oriented. He emphasizes that successful projects are not just made on time within the budget, but also solve customer problems.
The management of stakeholders was carried out in a separate area of ​​knowledge in order to emphasize very strongly.
Of the other differences ... There are quite a few minor differences that some PMBK experts may notice. But so, from the side, if I start commenting, it will simply not be clear. Many will shrug their shoulders: “So what, what's the difference?”. In general, I would say that PMBoK is becoming more verified, more accurate. Even here, the third edition at one time was so watery, reminiscent of some incomprehensible documents that I often encounter in my work. The fourth was already quite good, the fifth is just great. Few, all of the case.
PMBoK is becoming increasingly harmonized, for example, with ISO standards, with regard to working with quality, working with risks. Actually, it is striking. Of these most understandable changes, some things just disappear from PMBoK. And one such clear, very specific change - all references to the project triangle disappeared.
Wow.
People with experience, perhaps, will appreciate. It would seem that such a brand, which, in my opinion, PMBoK introduced at one time the type of triple constraint - a three-fold limitation: the time frame, the scope of work and the budget.
PMBoK generally removed the triangle, removed the picture, the triple constraint itself is no longer found in PMBoK. As I understand it, in order not to introduce managers into the temptation that I have done it in a triangle with the project. This is not the case; I still use the triangle to explain how PMBoK suggests building plans, basic plans. PMBoK has these triangle faces. If you disassemble from this point of view, much goes much easier. PMBoK itself, I repeat, removed the triangle from its pages so that the managers did not get hung up on it and did not think that if it met the triangle, then in general it was good.
Clear. Ivan, you have the most extensive experience in project management, consulting third-party projects, and training other managers. It is known that the Standish Group every year produces The Chaos Report about how many projects on average in the industry fail, how many are being done successfully. And this statistics over the past fifteen, or years, does not change much. What is the reason why changes do not occur, although there are methodologies, trainings, books? Why is that?
Good question. Probably it would be presumptuous to give him one single correct answer. I have the following considerations.
Humanity in general is poorly able to manage projects, it is quite natural.
It hasn't been doing this for a long time. Many colleagues may not agree with me, but mankind is still used to, more or less learned to regulate its activities in matters of regular management, let's call it that. For example, in the management of some production. Managing something where the uncertainty rate is low.
And project management is available where it is very difficult to build any long-term plans consistently, step by step. The environment changes too much, the goals are too vague, something else. Take that construction, that information technology, especially consulting projects, that any scientific projects, for example.
Therefore, on the one hand, the tasks are complex, and we deal with them badly. It is much easier to make plans and lead a team on this plan, clicking the whip where everything is more or less clear. Where the goal strives to change, there is no framework. This is on the one hand.
On the other hand, if you still talk about problems, I would single out two large groups. Projects are made by someone (managers) for someone (for business). From my point of view, there are problems on both sides. And managers are poorly able to manage projects, there are few professionals, and business is poorly able to play with them according to the same rules. I'll try to develop a thought.
In my opinion, a good project manager is a person with diverse experience.
Riddle, where can he get it, if life itself does not offer him his experience to diversify? But it is important, in my opinion. You can get a diverse experience, on the one hand, by changing the place of work. I do not say - to jump from work to work - but the manager, who managed different projects, in the public sector and not in the public sector, with distributed teams, and with teams that sit in the same place, is more flexible.
If we talk about software development, then in customized development or in product development, the perception of project management and the arsenal of tools and techniques that a manager can take at the right time is much broader.
Such an experience, by definition, makes the manager much more efficient compared to the option if he has been working at the same place for ten years and the environment does not change much. Managers whose ideas on project management are broad enough - a little.
On the other hand, I’ve been observing the last seven years: the demand in the market, I’m talking about Russia, I’m talking about St. Petersburg, I am sure that the same thing in Moscow, the demand for managers is very large. Even looking at the list of vacancies with the naked eye, their number, it is clear that so many professionals cannot be recruited.
Clearly, The Chaos Report is not about Russia, it’s about the world in general. But I think the problem is the same, everywhere the same.
Market applicants, not employers. It is difficult to find people with interesting multifaceted experience. For all their projects, firstly, they simply lack arithmetically, according to statistics. We get that the projects will be led by people who are not the most professional. In some places it is critical, somewhere it affects.
Very often I observe how managers themselves misunderstand managerial responsibilities, that is, many of my colleagues work in an emergency mode, including only from time to time.
At the same time, if we see a system administrator running with a fire extinguisher or a bundle of cable to “extinguish the server”, no one has the sensation: here’s a professional working! It seems that this is a dangerous madman and simply can not fix the process. But at the same time, a manager with three phones, bruised under his eyes for some reason causes many respect: here is a man who works, here is a manager in his place, here he is!
What is the difference, I personally do not understand. The manager is the person who organized the process, he has something to do, anyway. But this is not the mode in which most of my hardworking colleagues work. Not hackers - hardworking. The reasons why they do that? Without going into details - this is a lack of professionalism.
Not that I, such a professional, speak about them, but you have to be objective.
There are few professional managers on the market, on the one hand. On the other hand, this is a business attitude.
Managers scolded, now I scold the business.
Project management, a project manager for a business is a cost center. It does not generate revenue, not the seller, who can sell something for a billion and gild a business. The project manager, on the contrary, is the cost center. A person does something, walks, and we pay him money. This is outrageous for business people.
It is normal to build relationships with a project manager when the business is ready to play long and honestly. Ready to speak with the project manager in the same language, understand, listen to him. Understand that on how well the project management is built, the long-term costs and long-term business profit and other business benefits depend in the non-material area.
In fact, the Russian business, with which I have dealt with a lot, is not ready to understand.
Business plans: I want my managers to be normal, projects to perform good. At the same time, for its part, does quite a bit for this.
It is very important that the project has a normal goal, so that some of the project frameworks do not change. The classic problem that I’m talking about everywhere, it generally responds to many managers: lack of resources.
For example, you have been given 6 developers for a period of six months. Three months passed, you took two of you. They say I'm sorry - and transferred to another project. This, of course, also does not contribute to the successful completion of the project. Why it happens? Because managers and business do not know how to assess the value of the project on the shore in time, whether we are launching the project, no one is concerned with risks, as such.
But if you do not lay down the reserves and the response time to risks, costs can be up to half of the project budget.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/221559/
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