My 10-Day Study Guide for Passing the PMP Exam

I recently found myself with some unplanned downtime so I thought I'd take the opportunity to work on getting my PMP Certification. It seems to be cropping up more and more as a requirement for Strategy Consulting engagements in Ottawa, but also has solid international recognition.

Throwing caution to the wind (and about $800 CAD for the exam fee), I booked my exam and set aside 10 consecutive days for my preparation, the first of which I spent running around town finding study materials.

When you try to research what to actually study for the PMP exam, you will find that the information is not exactly definitive.  The Project Management Institute (PMI) indicates that you should review the latest edition of the "PMBOK": A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)—Fifth Edition, but not solely. They indicate you should also review credible sources of project management methodology, but do not cite anything in particular. This made it pretty unsettling for me, knowing I had a very limited time to prepare!

In any case, I Googled what I could about the exam, talked to a few others who had taken it, and put together my own work plan of attack. I am very happy to report that my plan was a success, and I passed the exam on my first attempt - exactly 10 days after I went out and got the materials to study.

Here is a run-down of my 10-day preparation program. I hope this is of help to anyone considering taking the test! Please note that the contents of the PMP exam will be changing later this year, so my guide will only be appropriate if you are taking the exam before November 1st, 2015.

Happy studying... and celebrating! Don't forget to celebrate your success. That Chocolate Raspberry Damnation Cake never tasted so good as it did last night at 'Memories' as I pondered my morning's test result!

Timeline	Activity	Key Outcomes / Goals
Day 1	Source Your Study Materials – Chapters Indigo online ships to your door in about 2 days, or you can find all of them in local or University e-Libraries. 1.      PMBOK: A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge, 5th Edition by PMI 2.      PMP Certification All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Cynthia Snyder 3.      The Pmp Exam: How To Pass On Your First Try, Fifth Edition, by Andy Crowe 4.      Optional: McGraw-Hill's PMP Certification Mathematics  Source Some Sample Tests (There is one at the back of the Dummies Book and another in the Andy Crowe book, but you may also want a few others): ·        Free PDF (Paper-Based) Test with 175 questions – (I did this one)  ·        Headfirst Labs Free Online Test – (I did not do this one) ·        Free Online Test (I did not do this one) Start Reading the PMBOK Guide Aim to read 4 -6 chapters (out of 13). Actively read by making notes of the key points or terms you are not completely familiar with.	Understand the overall structure of the PMBOK methodology Get a sense of what you need to know for the Exam Become familiar with the 5 key processes: 1.       Initiating 2.       Planning 3.       Executing 4.       Monitoring & Controlling 5.       Closing   Get through 4 to 6 Chapters
Day 2	Finish Reading the PMBOK Guide Complete chapters 7-13. Reward yourself for getting through the first book!	Understand how the knowledge management areas work with the 5 project processes.
Day 3	Start Reading the Dummies Guide Work through Chapters 1-5. Make notes, clarify anything you aren’t sure of, and make sure to do the mini-practice tests at the end of each chapter.	Start to understand some of the mathematical equations and problems. Understand the Critical Path Method.
Day 4	Continue Reading the Dummies Guide Work through chapters 6-13. Don’t worry, if you can’t quite make it, leave a couple of final chapters for the next morning.	Get more familiar with the formulas and understand EV calculations.
Day 5	Finish Reading the Dummies Guide Take Your 1st Practice Exam at the Back of the Dummies Guide I scored 72 on this – Being half-way through my plan, I felt I was in a good position to meet my end goal, but didn’t want to fully trust it yet.	Test yourself for the first time.
Day 6	Start Reading the Andy Crowe Guide Work through Chapters 1-4. Use the same approach that you did for the Dummies Guide. By now, this will all start to become quite familiar and you will begin to solidify key concepts. Take the night off – go out and enjoy yourself!! Breaks are key.	Reinforce your knowledge of the ‘order’ of key processes.   Take a good BREAK!
Day 7	Continue Reading the Andy Crowe Guide Work through Chapters 5-10 Use the PMP Mathematics book to review some of the key calculations and do some more math problems.	Continue reinforcing key concepts. Become proficient in EV and Critical Path calculations. Create your own Formula Sheet and practice writing it from memory.
Day 8	Finish Reading the Andy Crowe Guide Work through Chapters 11-13 Read the PMI Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct (In the PMBOK)	Become confident that you could now do a test and score at least 75%.
Day 9	Take Your 2nd Practice Exam Do the exam at the back of the Andy Crowe Guide. Time limit yourself, turn off the phone and take a break in the middle. Score yourself, and then carefully review each question you did not answer correctly. Make sure you understand how to derive the right answer. I scored 84 in this test, so my confidence was building. Review any areas that you are still weak on – practice writing out the key formulas from memory.	Become proficient in recognizing an activity as either an ‘input into’ or an ‘output of’ a process. Don’t memorize, just recognize. Understand how to eliminate wrong answers from test questions and get down to 50-50 choices.
Day 10	Take Your 3rd Practice Exam and Do a Final Review ·         You could start the day by doing another practice exam – I did the Oliver Lehmann Test on Paper and scored 82. ·         Flip through each chapter in the Andy Crowe guide one more time, reviewing the key points and the Key Outputs of each process. Do some practice problems for critical path, EV and time estimation. Write out your formula sheet several time from memory. ·         Re-read the PMI Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct ·         Review any terms you still tend to forget. ·         Stop all study activity by 8-9pm, watch a short TV program, and get to bed early!	Conduct a final review, reconfirm any areas you are uncomfortable with.   Make sure you can reproduce a formula sheet from memory.   Relax and get lots of rest.
Day 11	Take the Exam!	Finish all questions, and pass the test! Celebrate!!

Some Other Comments From My Experience:

• I worked about 3-4 hours every morning, another 1 in the afternoon and about 1.5-2 every evening. I took one whole night off.
• The hardest thing about the test is trying to remember whether an activity comes before a process (is an input into), or after it (as an output). Make sure you know some key differences like Quality Control vs. Quality Assurance and you should be fine.
• The actual test questions were a lot longer than some of the practice questions. It meant I had to spend more time reading questions on the exam to try to understand what they were actually asking. I finished the exam with about 20 minutes left to review some questions, but I did not have time to go through the whole exam again.
• The material is actually pretty interesting and makes you think back on many of the projects (good or bad!) that you have done in your lifetime. The 2 study guides I used were excellent, and made it really easy to understand the concepts, while breaking it into logical chapters that I used to measure my progress.

The Nortel Story - Lessons from a Canadian Darling Gone too Soon

It was standing room only yesterday at the Marshes Golf Club in Kanata, where University of Ottawa Business School Professor, Jonathan Calof and team stood up to present their key findings from a 3-year study on the demise of Nortel (Telfer Nortel Study).

"First, put up your hand if you ever worked at Nortel," Calof said to the packed room. At least 90% of the arms went up, including my own. It was clear to see that Nortel holds a place dear to the hearts of the Ottawa community.

I had my very first real job as a Business co-op student at Nortel in Toronto, back in 1996. It was the hey-day of University internships, where hundreds of eager students got to learn the ropes of business and technology every four months in a very open, rewarding and learned environment complete with the latest technology (an Apple duo-dock laptop!). The coordinated group activities and pizza lunches with the President didn't go astray, either. I know my own expectations of working life were set pretty high from that first week on the job.

So where did it all go  horribly wrong? How could the largest public company in Canada go from the heights of success in the year 2000 with 93,000 employees, to bankruptcy nine years later?

Failure is complex, the report concludes. It wasn't just one thing that led to the failure, but rather a combination of factors broadly categorized as 1. Misreading the External Environment, 2. Ignoring The Black Cloud of customer doubt and 3. a Lack of Resilience around strategy, financial management & people/culture.

Calof and team have taken a true Management Consulting approach to digging in to the details of the Nortel business to uncover some 100+ lessons learned in the hopes that the business world can learn what to look for and how to behave to prevent another such collapse. Through in-depth personal interviews with executives, employees and customers, and detailed financial analysis, the Nortel Study Executive Summary Report is a must read.

Highlights from the Study:

• When approaching growth, make sure strategy and culture are aligned - Nortel had a very strong culture of innovative R&D through its centralized BNR facility. A dramatic shift from developing its own technology, to poorly assimilated acquisitions led to the company becoming a market 'follower' rather than a leader.
• In a technology-driven company, senior management needs to listen carefully - The external market forces and competition were changing, and a culture of arrogance at Nortel impeded decision-making. "We created the market, so how can it be taken away from us?"
• Customers pay attention to how suppliers behave - A 'Black Cloud' of customer doubt formed, where Nortel's customers felt alienated by the company and didn't trust its vision or resilience for the future, and the company did nothing to dispel their fears.
• Knowing when to retrench is essential to build resilience and reduce customer doubt - Nortel had several opportunities to sell-off business units and 'get back to basics,' but hubris led them not to.
• Financially-driven incentives must align with the strategy for growth - Nortel Management failed to maintain adequate financial controls, and introduced a system that favored legacy products (high margins) over higher-risk innovation. They were entirely focused on the stock price, rather than the bottom line.

Related articles:

‘Culture of arrogance’ felled telecom giant Nortel, study finds - The Globe and Mail

Jonathan Calof: The strength of Nortel was its people - The Ottawa Citizen

Would the 'real' Tweet please stand up?

Though I signed up for a Twitter account back in 2010 while attending the annual Forrester Marketing forum, I only recently started to give it any attention -- ironically, just before the Ellen Selfie made its debut. Perhaps a bit 'late' to the game, I also think I benefit from jumping in with an existing notion of what social media 'is' and what I hope to gain from it so I can participate accordingly.

I have lots of great things to say about the tool, like its openness and 'real-time' spin that makes you feel like you're an active part of events around the world. However, the very thing that I believe makes Twitter an amazing platform for sharing ideas and encouraging global progress, is being undermined by what I call the 'fake' or 'canned' Tweet. If @BarackObama is going to tweet, it should be his thoughts and ideas (even if they are censored). What I don't appreciate seeing is tweet after canned tweet about signing up for healthcare. As a marketer, I'm often disappointed in the way that new digital innovations seem to get taken over by the marketing machine.

The real value in Twitter is to allow the everyday Joe to connect with TV personalities, business leaders and inspirational individuals right alongside their co-workers, friends and family members. A conversation should be two-way. Think about the conversation at your dinner table tonight if you had a list of canned tweets that you were programmed to say. Right after you ask your car-enthusiast significant other to pass the potatoes, he starts rambling off messages that had virtually no relevance to the current conversation:

Wife: "Honey can you please pass the Potatoes? Thanks. Hey, I was thinking of inviting the neighbours over for dinner this weekend, what do you think?
Husband: "If you need new winter tires, check hashtag MichelinXice tomorrow atCanadianTire has a sale." 
Wife: "Huh? Ok, but what about dinner - do you have any plans with your buddies on Sat night that I should know about?"
Husband: "Love the new hashtag RangeRoverEvoque atLandRoverUSA."

What I would love to see on Twitter is a way to identify the real personal-penned tweets from the canned marketing tweets -- similar to the checkmark verification for official account profiles. Sometimes it's easy to discern, but sometimes it isn't. Better yet, I challenge the big brands to give up more messaging control to their subject matter experts and personalities, who really drive readers to want to engage with them on a peer-to-peer level. In the world of social media, I believe it's quality over quantity of communications that will build respect and ensure the medium continues to be valuable to users.

Would the real Tweet please stand up?

(Note: The Obama account does use a -BO signature for his supposed personalized tweets, but they are few and far between the healthcare spam messages!)

Top 5 Quotes from the DX3 Canada Digital Strategy Conference

The Mobile Innovation Store at DX3Canada - Toronto

This week I had the pleasure of attending the DX3 Digital Strategy & Marketing Conference in Toronto. I really enjoyed listening to the engaging speakers talk about their approaches to digital within their organizations. The vibe on the trade show floor was equally as energetic, where new technology startups mixed with seasoned veterans of the Retail, Payments and Marketing worlds. Check out Twoople, which lets you sign up for your own instant chatbox digital 'address', and Spently, which is pushing towards e-receipts (something I am personally anxious to see in a ubiquitous format).

One of the underlying themes I noticed was the digital revolution is about 'telling stories,' and it's not just journalists and marketers that have the ability to tell them anymore. In fact, the most compelling stories are being told through the eyes of consumers, often in unplanned ways. The latest innovations in digital technology & marketing are enabling businesses to respond better to both planned and unplanned live events - but only if they can foster a digital culture that is nimble, open to information sharing, and accepting of failure. One such technology was Candid, a Toronto startup that enables brands to leverage the marketing power of consumers' own instagram photos featuring their products. Another key theme had to be the acceleration of mobile as a core driver of Retail experiences and payments. We heard that over half of our digital time is now spent on mobile devices, and 13% of payments are contactless in Canada - which is truly becoming a world leader in digital payments innovation and adoption.

One of the most moving presentations took us through the Calgary Stampede's use of social media as a crisis management tool last summer. Without placing one paid ad, they were able to sell 160,000 'Come Hell or High Water' t-shirts in 3 weeks with proceeds going to the Red Cross. In true digital disruption fashion, the social buzz created a need for incredible manufacturing & distribution logistics that could never have been forecasted.

Here are my 5 favorite quotes from the speaker series - I look forward to hearing more about these evolving trends in the coming days!

1. "Publishing is now a Paris Café" - Eric Harris, EVP of Business Operations, BuzzFeed
The rise of social media as a way to receive and engage with publishing content puts all types of communications in one place -- serious news sits side-by-side with entertaining photos, jokes, gossip and personal interests. The millennial generation receives their content feeds almost 100% through mobile and social means, so publishers are having to embrace individuals in their complete state. The opportunity for brands is limitless, with short videos, articles & quizzes all proving to be excellent ways of engaging customers in a more dynamic way than traditional online advertising.

2. "Don't ask me what my digital strategy is... ask me what it means for my supply chain!' - Duncan Fulton, SVP Communications & Corporate Affairs, Canadian Tire & CMO FGL Sports & Mark's
Digital disrupts the business model in more ways than just marketing communications. Through testing social media advertising (compared with traditional paper flyers), the Canadian Tire / Sport Check group has seen first-hand the implications on everything from demand planning to distribution, warehousing and customer service. It is crucial to plan and test, to ensure your operational model delivers the digital customer experience you envision.

3. "We're in a remote-first, mobile worker-first world" - Steve Heck, CIO, Microsoft Canada
We heard that 60% of staff time is now spent outside the office, so we need to equip employees to have a great customer experience across devices & applications. These devices need to 'follow them through their day' to ensure a meaningful impact on their productivity, which we want to start measuring.

4. "You don't really own your brand - your advocates do. They will advocate it for you, but it has to be audacious, relevant & fun." - Deanne Carson, VP Marketing & External Relations, Calgary Stampede

If you're able to do something good in a time of bad (crisis), your customers will sit up and take notice. Through social media, they will promote your brand through their own stories and reactions to the ones you tell about your own brand. Video is a great medium for this. But you need to move fast to keep your audience updated and engaged. You might not always get it perfectly right, but you will win respect for trying to communicate as openly and quickly as you can.

5. "The leather wallet model needs to move from leather to glass." - David Robinson, VP Emerging Business, Rogers Communications

The evolution of mobile payments and the 'digital wallet' is about keeping it simple. People like familiarity and comfort, which helps drive discovery & trial of new solutions. Three (3) times is the magic number of times a user needs to try a new technology before adopting it. The first step is to simply replicate a credit card in the mobile 'wallet' format, without upsetting the existing financial banking & payments systems.... this can evolve over time to more remote forms of digital commerce. David predicts that all of our major payment cards in Canada will be available on our 3 major mobile networks by the end of 2014 (except on Apple devices, which hasn't yet rolled out NFC capability).

Can we Reinvent the Business Case to actually Encourage Innovation?

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the 2nd anniversary celebration of Invest Ottawa - a really great resource for helping fledgling entrepreneurs in the city. More than just a chance to meet the Mayor and eat chocolate cake, it was an opportunity to see some of the great innovations and business concepts launching in our own backyard (eg, BitAccess, the first Bitcoin ATM, or Gnowit, a realtime media monitoring & analysis service).

As I walked around learning about some of the new ventures, I took great inspiration from the confident, 'no-fear' attitude of their founders. Sometimes we forget that many of the big brands we now take for granted were once small startups that had to work like crazy to get themselves heard in a sea of competitors and nay-sayers.

One observation really got me thinking about what we need to do to encourage more creativity, innovative thinking, and pilot program development in the workplace. I noticed that young entrepreneurs (and when I say young here, I mean under 25yrs) seem to have something we could all benefit from -- the 3 'C's:  1. carefree will, 2. confidence, and 3. candor. Not yet burdened by the hierarchy of experience, they are driven by the belief that any idea has a chance to make it big, and they just 'go with it.' When talking with interested parties, they're not afraid to be honest about where they are with revenue (or the lack thereof), but exude confidence that the product or service has what it takes to succeed.

One big way I think businesses could help to encourage greater innovation is by changing the Business Case Process within their organizations. Often described as a 'brick,' the Business Case Template can be an arduous, time-consuming and tedious task for product managers to complete in the hopes of getting senior executive attention and funding for their creative ideas. The larger the organization, the more 'gates' of approval that are usually required to move ideas forward. Obviously, from a financial and legal standpoint, it is important to have a process for prioritizing and funding ideas, but there has to be a better way.

Here are just a few ideas for how you could re-invigorate innovative thinking in your company:

-Allocate up 20% of employee's time to innovative activity - either through individual submissions, participation in creative brainstorming sessions, attendance at industry events, etc. This is a common practice in some of the known digital leaders like Intuit and Google to help foster a culture of creativity.

-Ask for a 1-page 'Innovation Infographic' to describe the key value proposition, target market and competitive positioning of the service offering rather than a heavy word document business case.

-Hold a breakfast roundtable with your key executives to review the top 3 creative ideas each month (the idea generators actually attend the meeting to present their infographic - no death by powerpoint and pancakes) - the ideas could be vetted and 'voted on' via internal social media. If the idea can't be conveyed through a 1-pager (ie, elevator pitch), it won't be compelling for your customers or investors either.

No matter what you do from a process perspective, it is crucial that you follow-through with feedback on any ideas that are submitted or piloted. Openly discussing both successes and failures is key to fostering trust among your employees that they can feel comfortable submitting ideas without fear of failure or losing their jobs.

As the cartoon below depicts, that last thing you want in your idea lab are documents full of false promises and 'fabricated' clauses. Focus on what matters most to your company strategy and your customer needs... and the statistics will soon follow!

The Art of Surprise, in Business and in Life

Have you ever been surprised (in a good-surprise kind of way)? Isn't it the most amazing feeling - a sort of surreal moment when you realize you're getting something you didn't expect -- like free tickets to an event a friend couldn't attend, an unsolicited upgrade on a flight, or one of those fancy little 'amuse bouche' appetizers between courses at a restaurant. It could even be something as simple as a nice complement received from a coworker that you thought wasn't one of your famed supporters.

 

The Art of Surprise in Business can have a profound impact on customer experience, and ultimately, on a brand's reputation. Companies who develop a customer-centric culture will be more likely to create such moments of 'surprise and delight' for their customers that will be remembered and shared, particularly in today's tech-savvy social environment. The longer a customer has known a brand, the more difficult it may be for the brand to step outside its reputation and impress the customer, but it is never too late. Three ways to start developing such a culture are to:

1. Create a Customer Experience Council with senior-level representation from across the company. Customer experience is everyone's responsibility, not just the Customer Service team. It is crucial for all executives to hear a selection of customer comments monthly or quarterly, and put programs in place to respond to customer needs better, while developing ways to proactively impress customer in future.
2. Incent Employees to Put the Customer First - If your staff are encouraged (and rewarded) for ensuring a positive customer experience, they will enjoy the empowerment of identifying with the customer's needs and going out of their way to impress. Assign a small budget to each employee to allocate to customer 'surprises' how they see fit each month.
3. Always Follow-up and Close the Loop with Customers - If a customer contacts you to make a comment (positive or negative) it is imperative that you respond and provide them with something for their feedback. Every negative experience reported, is an opportunity to turn it into a positive.

There are, of course, the companies that set the bar so low on service that they don't have to do much to impress customers, who have come to 'expect' a poor experience (Rogers, you know what I'm talking about), but it is those who commit to, and develop a clear strategy for customer experience that will reap long-term rewards.

 

And... the Art of Surprise in Life?

 

Well, I can personally attest to the euphoria of such moments myself this week, as my partner caught me completely off-guard and proposed to me while skating on the Rideau Canal. After almost 7 years together, I thought I was impossible to surprise. But he had been silently listening and observing all the while, waiting for the perfect 'unrehearsed' moment to do what I least expected... pull out the most beautiful sparkling diamond ring a girl could ever want, while I stood there in puffy winter clothes and a nerdy helmet. Surprised, yes, and delighted?... Absolutely!

'No-Brainer' Retailing - 3 Things Every Canadian Retailer Should be Doing in the Digital Era

Photo Credit: Stuart Isett for The New York Times

As I continue to hear about the challenges of Retailers in Canada like Sears, Best Buy, even Canada Post - who are struggling to find relevance for their brick-and-mortar assets in the digital era, I ask myself if they might be focusing too much on the hype of social media marketing and mobile applications, and actually missing out on a few of the basics for good customer experience?

Consumers are becoming more tech savvy and expect Retailers (especially National ones) to keep pace. Even my mid-70's aged parents have an iPad mini that they carry around with them, checking Facebook posts and looking up products online before heading to the store to make a purchase. Consumers value their time, and are spending less of it physically browsing in stores. If they find an item they would like to purchase in-store but it isn't available in their color/size, they don't just 'want' the store to do everything they can to find it for them, but they have come to 'expect' it to. Retailers that don't make any effort to do so will quickly lose favor with consumers, who will be drawn to more sophisticated alternatives. (Hudson's Bay, take note - with Nordstrom coming to town in the next year, you might want to think about the following 3 ways you could help win -- and retain -- your customers.)

1. Provide Inventory Visibility Online
When a customer visits your website to look for a particular item, they should be able to see which stores have it available -- and if you build the functionality, make sure it actually works! I don't know what's worse for a retailer's reputation -- not providing the inventory visibility at all, or having it wrong 90% of the time.

2. Integrate Inventory Visibility Across Your Channels (In-Store, Online, Mobile)
It's one thing to let customers see what you have available in your 'online store,' but it's quite another to actually integrate your inventory across your physical stores and online/mobile. If a customer asks a sales rep 'Can you please tell me if you have this sweater in a size large at your store across town?' they need to be able to look it up on the Retail POS and give an accurate answer. As I was shopping this past Christmas season, I don't' know how many times I heard, "I'm sorry, our systems can't do that, I can't see what's available and even if I could, it would likely be wrong. I could try calling them for you, but they might not pick up the phone." Nordstrom announced this functionality back in 2010, so it's not new.

3. Incent your Sales Staff to Promote a Multi-Channel Experience
I actually think this is the single most important element of a good customer experience in the digital era. Regardless of whether or not a Retailer has successfully implemented #1 or #2 above, they simply must train and incent their Retail staff to make a sale through any channel that meets the customer's  need. You might be trying to grow physical store sales by incenting staff to only sell what's on the floor, but channel conflict will do nothing to promote your digital savvy. If the item isn't available, the clerk must be rewarded for going out of their way to locate an option for the customer -- and if the item is above a certain dollar value, offer to ship it to their home for free. The sophisticated, positive customer experience will reap ongoing returns for you that far exceed the added cost of sale. Nordstrom again, hits this one out of the park (in the USA) - let's wait to see if they do the same north of the border... and if the threat of sophisticated competition entices some of our own big Retailers to up the ante on their own digital customer experience.

Happy Holidays!

May you find rest, relaxation and lots of chocolate under your tree this year!