The first session was Jeff Hallett, Director of Program Management Support Services and Assistant Vice President for Corporate Outreach for PMI, DC chapter.  He shared his thoughts on emerging trends in project and program management in federal contracting.  You can see it here.

The next session we have posted is Sara J. Kessinger, Director of Knowledge Management of Metier, delivering an engaging disussion of trends in blended software and service products for project and portfolio management, specifically focused on Metier’s Worklenz product.  Watch this session here.

We’re working to post all the sessions we recorded, so I’ll keep you updated as we add more.  Don’t forget to get your tickets for this year’s conference here

We’ve had some trouble with the membership application form so if you’ve filled out a membership application on this site and we haven’t welcomed you to the PMSA, please fill out the application again.  You can always email us at pmsa@gwu.edu if you have any concerns about an application or form you submitted.

Thanks,

Craig.

I am graduating in the fall, so I will not be returning.  I’ve held two positions with the PMSA: 2008-09 VP of Marketing and 2009-10 President.  As most of you know, I am a distance student, as are many of my fellow board members.  This year we’ve proven that it is possible to do almost everything from a distance but I’ll admit it isn’t easy.  Virtual management is always tricky but it’s more complicated in a school setting where most of the resources assume you’re on campus.

It is, however, very rewarding.  As the VP of Marketing, I had a chance to create marketing campaigns and explore various social marketing strategies.  As president, I’ve had an opportunity to make strong connections and work with a lot of people I would not have met otherwise.  The experience and connections I gained through serving have really added another dimension to my education here at GW.

If you’re interested in serving on next year’s board, I invite you to fill out our Board Member Application, on our site: http://bit.ly/bqqMbX  You must be a graduate student to serve on the board but you do not have to be in the MSPM program.

I do have two recommendations: first, the president usually speaks at orientation and, because it’s easier to start partnerships face-to-face, it’s a role best suited to someone who can come to campus once a semester.  Second, the role of VP of Events is probably best suited to a campus student because it involves coordinating local activities like finding rooms and venues.

We will accept applications until April 15, an easy to remember deadline.  If you have any questions about the responsibilities, please feel free to send me an email.

The PMSA is in a truly unique position to add value to the students, engage the alumni, and increase the visibility and prestige of the MSPM program.  I encourage you to consider serving on the board and taking the association in new directions.

Craig Baker
President,
GW PMSA

Check it out and purchase tickets here.

Check out last year’s conference page here.

We’re still adding and refining so return often for more information.

To answer these questions and more, the PMSA and the Career Center are teaming up to offer a webinar to cover the services available to you.  Sylvia Gray, a career consultant with the Career Center, will deliver the presentation and also answer your questions.

A lot of things have changed since most of us went through orientation.  I’ve been using their services to help me plan for a career transition and I’ve been really impressed.  I encourage you to attend the webinar to learn more.

The webinar is open to students and alumni only, so we’re asking you to register with your GWU email address.  There is more information on the webinar below and you can always send questions to pmsa@gwu.edu.  I hope to see you there.

The webinar is now available here.

It runs 1 hour and 20 minutes.

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The F. David Fowler Career Center (FDFCC) provides full service to all MSPM students.  We have a myriad of resources including:

In-house or telephone appointments with a career coach for:
· Career strategy and advising sessions
· Professional document review (resume and cover letter)
· Self Marketing Plan construction
· Networking advice
· Interview prep
· Offer negotiation

An extensive Resources webpage which includes access to:
· Our online job board (GWorkSB). Access GWorkSB through our webpage and Register to create an account.
· A full suite of online tools including VAULT Graduate, GoinGlobal,  Selectory (for in-depth company research), and Interview Stream.
· Meridian University Solution’s online career management course,  Career Navigator, as well as Quantum Career Momentum for professionals transitioning within their own company, and Entrepreneurship for those students wanting to determine if starting their own business is right for them.

I’ll paraphrase the four tasks because they’re slightly out of context here, but I highly recommend reading the article (Reprint R0905D):

1. Define the what’s important to the company in the outside world.
2. Decide what business the company is in.
3. Balance short term and long term goals.
4. Shape the values and standards by which the company operates.

If you think of yourself as the CEO of your own career, you can translate these four tasks into crucial activities that only you can do:

1. Define what is meaningful to you
2. Decide what you’re going to do with your career
3. Balance the immediate needs of your life with long term goals
4. Determine your personal values and standards and hold yourself to them

Let me break these down.

Define what’s meaningful to you

Lafley says the CEO must decide which stakeholders are the most valuable and what results are the most salient.  In other words, on whom will the company focus and what are the key measures of success?  When the needs of multiple stakeholders conflict, decisions are made in favor of the key stakeholder.

Translating this to your career means more than simply saying your focus is your employer and the measurement is your salary.  We all have stakeholders in our lives (even the unattached can count themselves as a stakeholder) and they tend define our priorities.

Let me rephrase that- you define your priorities by deciding which of your stakeholders are most important.  This, in turn, defines the choices your make regarding your career.  Is you primary stakeholder your family?  Then maybe your career choices should maximize the time you can spend with them.  Is your main stakeholder your start-up?  Then make choices designed to grow the business.  The key is to identify all the stakeholders, decide which are the most important, and manage your career in such as way as to favor those stakeholders.

It may sound funny, but my dogs are key stakeholders in my life.  When I decided to adopt them, I chose to do so knowing I would be limiting myself.  I don’t feel it’s right to pull them out of one kennel only to place them in another if I take a position that requires a lot of travel.  This conscious decision actually points to task four, determining values, which I’ll discuss later.

Once you’ve determined which stakeholders are important, the next step is turning those priorities into quantifiable results.  Statements like “having a good work-life balance” are meaningless phrases common to business today.  What is the balance?  40 hours a week with a lot of vacation?  Working from home?  Maybe you are your primary stakeholder (which isn’t necessarily bad) and your results include new opportunities every 2 years.

To recap, decide who your primary stakeholders are, identify which career “results” are most important for them, and make decisions based on the idea that, if you run into a conflict, you decide in favor of the primary stakeholder.

Decide what you’re going to do with your career

In Lafley’s article, the CEO must decide which products or services the company will offer.  For example, if you run a management consulting company, are you focused on project management, executive coaching, or business process improvement?  What does your company do and what does it not do?

This same thing applies almost verbatim to your career.  Imagine you are a one-person company and your job is the company’s product or service.  Are you in the right business?  Are you in too many businesses?  When you’re offered new opportunities, do you think about how they align with your “core business?”

I was once offered a promotion that I turned down because accepting it meant leaving my chosen field (IT).  If I think of myself as a company, I’m in business to improve management decisions by applying technology, statistics, and design principles to data (“business intelligence” is the common term for it.)  The new opportunity would have meant more money but it wouldn’t have played to my strengths.  While this decision set me back a little, I have no regrets.  Accepting the job would have made me a little more financially comfortable but ultimately frustrated and unhappy.

Balance the immediate needs of your life with long term goals

Lafley speaks of the balance CEO’s must strike between short term gains such as stock price improvements with long term strategy such as investing in the future 10 or 15 years away.

I imagine this to be similar to riding a bike.  If you spend all your time looking a few feet in front of you, you’ll avoid hitting things but you’re likely to wander off course.  On the other hand, if you are only watching the horizon, you may not see a ride-ending pothole.  The trick is to balance the two, alternating between watching the road in front of you and looking ahead to make sure you’re on track.

This is certainly one I struggle with.  The demands of work, school, the PMSA, and volunteer activities push career development activities like networking and researching new opportunities “down the road.”  Naturally, if I continue to go from short term goal to short term goal, I run the risk of losing my way or worse, simply going in circles.

Obviously, you have to deal with what’s coming up now but take time to check your progress against the map you create with the other steps.  Maybe your goal is to make program manager in 5 years.  Are the projects you’re accepting taking you along that path or are you accepting what’s easy or what makes your co-workers happy?  If your primary stakeholder is your family, are you making decisions that afford you time with them or has “occasional overtime” become the norm?

I’ve started to set aside an entire day periodically to focus on planning this task.  For me it’s easier than mixing it in with everything else.  You may find it easier to spend a few hours a month checking your map against your current trajectory.  Be sure to think about your post-career goals; I’ve discovered through this process that I have goals for retirement (even optimistically, more than 20 years away) that require action today.

Determine your personal values and standards and hold yourself to them

Values, says Lafley, are about identity and behavior.  They determine how the company behaves and, therefore are connected to the other four activities.  Standards are how the company measures its performance in the marketplace.

In some ways, this activity might make more sense as number 1 because it ties in so closely to the others, especially identifying stakeholders.  If your primary stakeholder is your family, you must value family over money or climbing the corporate hierarchy.  If you’re primary stakeholder is an aging parent, you may value flexible hours and working remotely more than being challenged or getting new assignments.

Of course, your values aren’t necessarily tied to stakeholders alone but I think if you consider the values you hold, you’ll see a stakeholder behind most of them.  For example, let’s say you believe protecting the environment to be so important that you avoid investing in companies that do not employ sustainable business practices.  The environment is your stakeholder- does it make sense to work for a company that conflicts with this value?

Standards are similar but they tend to drive your day to day work.  Let’s say your company holds a standard of all projects being no more than 10% over budget.  You may hold yourself to a standard of completing projects within 10% of the budget, over or under.  Adhering to this standard makes is harder to pad your estimates, a tempting approach to meeting company targets.

Consider writing your values and standards down and referring to them frequently.  I think a lot of people have a vague idea of what their values are but when they are stored only in your head, it’s easy to fudge them or confuse them when conflicts arise.  Specifically defining your values and standards will also help identify stakeholders and assist in making decisions, especially the small decisions that compound over time into larger dilemmas.

Putting it together

I’m probably not telling you anything new.  If you’ve spent any time in management or career development training, chances are you’ve heard advice like this before.  The challenge is in taking the time to plan.  I recently heard it takes 27 weeks to find a new job in this economy but the statistic applies to the unprepared.  These steps will certainly help you prepare but they will also help keep you on the path to your goals.  By making time to work through these activities periodically you will be better equipped to make decisions, even small ones, that could profoundly affect your career.

First, I’d like to welcome the 41 new students and wish all of you luck. The program you are entering is a challenging, yet rewarding one. You will meet a lot of talented people from a wide range of backgrounds, industries, and locations, making this an excellent way to increase your network. At the same time, you will undoubtedly learn something new regardless of how much experience you have in project management.

If you’re a student who has been in the program for a semester or more, you may be interested to know that orientation has changed somewhat. Anne has expanded the previously 1.5 day program to two full days and the first day now includes the Bridge Game from the Fundamental class, a change that allows distance students to participate.

Another thing you may not realize, especially if you are a distance student, is that the David Fowler Career Center has put together an impressive array of career tools accessible from anywhere. These new resources include resume assistance, salary information, tips on writing cover letters, virtual interviews that actually record you so you can see how you perform, and late night or weekend access to counselors. The Career Center has agreed to partner with the PMSA to offer webinars to students, the first of which will cover all of the new resources available. Future webinars could include resume tips, interview advice, or almost anything you as members might be interested in.

You may recall that we’ve decided to support the George Washington Cancer Institute this year. They have agreed to open an account for donations from the PMSA and to work with us in organizing various events such as the Marine Corps Marathon and an Avon Marathon Cheer Station. They will keep up apprised of their activities and we (the board) will pass the information along to you.

I also had a chance to meet with Russell, the president of the new MSPM Alumni Association. The alumni are finalizing the organizations structure and choosing leadership. For you distance students, the new organization includes representatives for both local and distant members. We will be working together in the months to come and if you’re graduating soon, I encourage you to contact Russell for more information.

Finally, I met with Elizabeth Panker from the DC PMI. We discussed options for webinars and future WDC-PMI collaboration, so look forward to that.

Well, that’s about all I have for now. I hope to add a blog post or two each week this semester, so please return or subscribe to our RSS feed. As always, we welcome your input!

Have a great semester,

Craig Baker

President,

GWU PMSA.

There is no single type of media that will satisfy all the changing needs of the project and of the team. To succeed, a team must mix communication media that have the capabilities that best suit the team’s needs. It’s also important to build on prior traditional relationships where possible and set rules and norms that govern communication. For instance, how do we interact in social networking sites? How do we handle shared documents? When do we use email instead of the phone?

After reviewing forms of communication and some theories behind the way people communication in virtual teams, the paper offered the following suggestions:

• Understand the task at hand. Why are we assembling as a team, what is our purpose? Is the task one of information collection and dissemination, or information processing and understanding?
• Know the team. Where are we located, what is our level of technical expertise, what kinds of personalities are on the team?
• Understand the constraints. What tools are available, what is the time frame, how much money is available to purchase tools and do we have time to implement them?
• Combine technologies. For example, one of the authors routinely uses instant messaging with phone conferences when discussing formula or programming topics, especially with people in different countries. The team pastes source code snippets into the IM discussion and can use the text-based format to clarify words when accents are difficult to understand.
• Plan your communication. For teams that will be together for more than one or two meetings, it’s important to agree on and codify a plan for communication. This may be as simple as a list of phone numbers and call dates or several pages outlining
• Use collaborative workspaces. Although the tools can differ widely, there are dozens of virtual workspaces available, the use of which should benefit any team collaborating for more than a very short period. Email is very easy to overuse; sharing documents in a common area eliminates a lot of confusion.
• Meetings, particularly phone, voice, or face to face, should be followed up with a summary.  Depending on the team needs, these could be in the form of minutes, or simply a review of major decisions and points. This can be especially helpful for multicultural/international teams where language barriers may increase the chances of misinterpretation.
• Train team members. In certain cases, especially long-term projects, it may be beneficial to train the members on how to use the chosen technology. Even if the team has some experience with the tool, they may not have used every feature.
• Factor communication cost into the project. It’s important to set aside funds for the team’s communication cost. Good virtual communication tools are usually not free and as the projects get larger and more complex, it is important to factor in contingency costs in case the primary form of communication breaks down or an alternative needs to be sourced.

Obviously, managers deciding on virtual team tools face a difficult job. They must choose the tools based on the task at hand, the make-up and technical proficiency of the team, and the budget. In addition to deciding on the tools, they must initiate the policy for using the tools; the flexibility of each tool necessitates outlining rules for use. The leading theories that describe how virtual teams interact when using various tools may not be perfect — indeed they are often being reconsidered or refined – but they provide managers a foundation for making choices. In the end, the decision requires the same wisdom that informs most project management decisions: know your purpose, know your team, and know your constraints. Make a conscious decision, don’t make arbitrary selections.

Do you have any experience managing virtual teams?  What techniques do you use?

From

The Effective Use of Technology to Improve Communication in Virtual Teams
Dec 1, 2009
Organizational Leadership and Management

Authors

Craig Baker
Khaled El-Sayed
Robson Nyereyemhuka
Elizabeth Ombija
Jamie Tang

I’d like to give you a brief idea of what we’re planning for the upcoming year but first, I’d like to take a moment to thank the outgoing board members Ron Schmelzer (President), Jhaymee Wilson (VP, Finance) and Matthew Levy (VP, Outreach). They decided last year to try something new and that idea grew into Transitions 2009, a tremendously successful one-day project management conference. Starting with little more than a good idea, they delivered an event that included 7 speakers and attracted over 40 people. Attendees gave the PMSA high marks for the event and everyone asked to be informed of future PMSA conferences. The event was so successful that this year’s team has decided to host another such conference. Our job will be considerably easier because of the work these three did.
Thank you Ron, Jhaymee, and Matthew!

Okay, I guess I let one of our ideas slip already: we’re planning to host another conference and possibly to expand it some. We’ve also discussed building up our website in order to make it more useful, holding more student-alumni networking events, and arranging seminars that we’ll make available using the classroom recording technology or Elluminate Live. A final idea we’re working on (this one might be my favorite) is to get the PMSA more involved in the community. Community
in this case means the DC area but also national events, like walk-a-thons. The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure or the AIDS Walk are great examples.

So this year the PMSA is focused on three things: engaging alumni, providing more opportunity to our distance students, and becoming involved in the community. So far we’re off to a great start.  You’ll hear more about our plans here on our site- in the meantime, be sure to check out our team in the About Us section.

If you’re interested in getting involved, we’d love to have your help. Please contact us at pmsa@gwu.edu.

Craig Baker
President, PMSA