In October, Terminus executed a product derivative license agreement with the PMI. This license permits Terminus to utilize PMI-owned content in our training material. While our material has always been in-line with PMI principles, we now can present and distribute material directly from the PMI standards themselves.

This week we launched of talent management application portal ReqTrac™ a full month ahead of schedule. Though this portal Terminus’ staffing clients can create and manage their staffing requisitions process. As candidates are identified and pre-screened by our recruiters, an introduction is made to the employer. Employers can then access the candidate’s full profile and resume online and then determine the next step (phone screen, interview, or reject).

Jobseekers are encouraged to self register and create job alerts with targeted keywords. When new employer staffing requisitions are created, an email will be sent to jobseekers with matched job alerts.

The training schedule from September 09 – February 10 has been reworked. While a few previously schedule courses encountered a date change, in the end we were able to add 15 new classes. We are optimistic that these new courses will satisfy greater customer demand.

For over a year RegOnline has handled our course registration. While this 3rd party solution worked well for our launch, we decided that it was time to integrate our own registration system. Last night we deployed our own shopping cart functionality and secured it with 256-bit encryption. Rest assured that your credit card information is safe when used on our site. Consistent with our previous solution, all credit card transactions are handled by Authorize.net.

Today we launched our Productive Consultant Training course. Although the Productive Consulting Training Series is designed as a multi-day event offered only to corporate clients, we are pleased to offer it as a one day workshop to the general public. This workshop will cover subjects intended to build upon the consulting skills base of the participants. A consulting case study will challenge attendees to identify and overcome situations that they are likely to encounter in the field.

Few introductory project management books dedicate any of their text to good behaviors of project leaders since they all follow the philosophy of how a project manager “manages” people via project management processes and they all shy away from how a project manager should be leading the project stakeholder units with hard and soft skills.

We should also recognize the other side of the coin for project leadership and understand where executive leadership is needed on a project, After all, senior management is involved with business plan and direction, project commitment, managing business change and helping to manage business risks and issues.
So, the project manager is not the sole provider of project leadership. To clarify, here are project areas where project leadership is needed and who can provide it:

Project Area for Project Manager Leadership

Project Team, Technical Issues, Communication and Facilitation

Project Area for Senior Manager Leadership

Managing Business Change, Business Issues, Project Direction and Commitment

Project Area for Project Manager and Senior Manager Leadership

Managing Risks, Managing Stakeholder Expectations

But even with the call out to where the project leadership responsibilities lay, a project manager must be empowered to operate effectively for project success. The majority of their decisions should be made independently without having to pass through the chain of command to operate effectively in their business environment. This involves using hard and soft skills that each project manager should possess:
• interpersonal skills (getting along with people)
• personal traits (attitude, value and personal conduct)
• technology management skills (familiarity with technologies used in the project)

• program management process skills ( understanding and using project management tools and techniques)

In summary, project leadership is the ability to motivate others to want to do what the manager thinks is the best thing to do. When both sides of the project leadership coin work together, it usually leads to project success without cost!

Your additional comments are welcomed

I recently retired after 28 years with project management experience with a major telecommunications company and began my second career as a trainer. In my previous project manager role, I managed many projects with challenging schedules and budgets exceeding $2M to $5M. But, in the early years of my work, we weren’t even called project managers and used no organized methodologies. I secured my PMP certification about three years ago and learned the PMI view of using Earned Value Management to revise your forecast of the future progress of your project versus the baselines of actual progress to date.

Looking back to early days of project management, we presented a “project” plan with a time-based forecast, posted usually to a Microsoft schedule, of various flavors! We did not give cost estimates, as the financial personnel were responsible for that data portion. The value or ‘worth’ of the project was usually discussed after the deliverables were accepted, but not in terms of planned value and variance at completion!

Did anybody else have these experiences and wonder, like me, how the project survived? Active project managers, do you use EVM regularly as a project management tool?

Terminus is currently evaluating qualified Texas Hub companies for potential auxiliary partnerships. We are specifically looking for companies that provide solutions that will support our staffing efforts. Companies with recruiting or  background investigation services are encouraged to contact us for consideration. The deadline to submit your company’s interest and potentially be included in our proposal to the state is Thursday, May 28th, 2009. For complete contact information please see http://www.terminus.net/contact/

During the week of April 6th, we prepared three more PgMP® candidates for the challenging PMI exam. On April 18th, the last of the three reported that she too had passed the exam. Each candidate scored better on their actual exam than they were predicted to do based on their practice exam scores during the prep course.