January 2013
The EVM Newsletter™
from Management Technologies
Highlights in this Issue
Personal Performance Metrics
On-Line EVPrep Study Guide
Want a Trip to Florida?
T.E.A.M about Risk
A FUN Project
Tidbit:Selling EVM to Execs
Why Friends are Good to Have
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2013 Personal Performance Metrics
   

Do you have your 2013 personal metrics in place?

 

We set up metrics for our projects but what about your personal goals. Hopefully in December 2013 your SPI will be greater than one, meaning you got more done this year than you planned.

 

Will your year end CPI be greater than one? If so, you'll end the year with more money in the bank (IRA, 401K, etc.) than you had at the start of 2013.

 

Get your 2013 baseline in place now.

 

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 Book Reviewer Sought 
   

The EVM Newsletter is seeking a reviewer of Earned Value Management for Project Management: Using Microsoft Office Project.

 

It's available from Amazon and other sources.

 

The reviewer should provide a 100-200 word review of the book to be published in The EVM Newsletter. (Might be worth a PDU or 2, or an AACE Recertificaion point.)

 

Attribution and the reviewers email links will be published if desired. If you are interested send me an email.

 

 
 
Quotable Quote
 quill
""Science and technology have progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations." 
 
Justin Rattner, Intel CTO
  

Forward to a friend 

 

Did you find this newsletter interesting?

Forward it to a friend!

 

 

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AACE Approved Education  Provider

 R.E.P. logo

PMI Registered Education Provider

 

Constant Contact All Star Award (2nd year)

(Less than 5% of Constant Contact customers are
All Stars.)
 

 

 

  
On-Line Interactive EVP Study Guide Just As Popular
 
laptop 

Since its introduction late last year the on-line interactive version of our EVP Exam Study Guide is proving as popular as the bound and downloadable versions.

 

For "connected" individuals the on-line version provides an interactive experience via an internet browser, without loss of any Study Guide content.  

 

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Your Justification for Travel to Florida

 

florida 

Here is your excuse to have the boss send you to Naples, FL.

 

Get a presentation accepted at EVM World 2013. Write up a 250 word or less abstract and your bio and submit it for review. Make sure to follow the requirements. No formal paper is required. Hurry time is running out.

 

Tracks on Earned  Schedule, US Gov't EVM, and Agile+EVM are planned.

 

Contact CPM, for the last date they can accept your abstract.

 

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TEAM Approach to Risk Management 
 

Last month we borrowed the  C.A.R.E acronym from the flying community as it addressed risk. We promised to define T.E.A.M in this issue.   

  

T.E.A.M

  

Transfer - can a risk be transferred

 

Eliminate - eliminate risks when possible

 

Accept - accept reasonable risks as part of the effort

 

Mitigate - mitigate risks

 

  

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AACE Seeks Presentations for Annual Meeting 
 

AACE's Annual Meeting will be in Washington D.C. 30 June to 3 July.

 

If you would like to speak you should draft your paper and submit it by 31 January. (Sometimes AACE extends the deadline but don't count on it.)

 

Check with AACE for the current due date and requirements.

 

  

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Is Your Project
THIS MUCH Fun!!!
 
 

Five minute, very "G" rated video

 

 

Boss, I Need a Fun Project
Boss, I Need a Fun Project

 

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Welcome to the January 2013 EVM Newsletter. The new year is off and running.me2011

   

Where do you want to travel to this year. Our expanded list of PM and EVM conferences and events gives you lots of dates and places to go.

 

Hopefully at the close of 2013 you will have had a successful year. We have a few words on 2013 personal performance indices.

 

So far we're happy with 2013. We spent  2012 working with a US civilian agency's contractor to help them meet the agency's IBR expectations. According the contractor PM "the COTR {contracting officer's technical representative} and CO {contracting officer} gave us an outstanding review. Said they were not able to give an A+ so an A would have to suffice for both the PMR and IBR." Billable hours to do this: 185.

 

Starting this month, and each month (space permitting) we'll cover a lesson learned from a past program and past program managers. Is your world unique? Maybe, but probably not. Sure, we have new technologies, but the basics of good PM and EVM are still the basics. This month is a 1991 lesson in customer relationships. Of course, the EVM Tidbits will continue too.

 

 Like us on Facebook  View our profile on LinkedIn

 

 

EVM is good business if your business runs projects to make money. Is EVM a standard part of your project and program management throughout your organization? Without executive sponsorship any initiative will fail. How do you get and keep executives sold on EVM? We have some ideas from a recent conference presentation.

 

The month's quote comes from the Intel (as in "inside") Chief Technology Officer. It's both exciting and fearful.

 

The next EVPrep(tm) workshop will be held in Reston VA on 10-11 April. Take the workshop before the exam and save $125.

 

A ten year project can suck the energy out of everyone, but not every ten year project. There's a five minute video to prove the point.

 

You can help make this newsletter interesting by contributing news about your activities in EVM, your company, product announcements, or your projects. Each month starts with a blank sheet, we don't make this stuff up! Send news to me at
 

evinfo@mgmt-technologies.com
 

Ray Stratton, PMP, EVP 

Editor

 

Tidbit #40, Selling EVM to the Execs and Keeping it Sold 

 

Too often EVM initiatives are terminated just short of getting the payoff of knowing how projects are really performing. We read againExecutive  and again that any initiative has to have senior management support. The challenge is how to get it, and how to keep it.

 

Neely Hermassi of EcoSys presented "Earned Value for the Rest of Us" at the AACE Southern California 2012 Fall Symposium held in Palm Springs. She said you have to speak their language, not the language of EVM. Terms like CPI, SPI, CV, and so on will just loose them.

 

Talk about actionable data for decision making. Use their lexicon, "under performing", ROI (aka CPI), "exceeding expectations". Define ROI = "earned/burned". Roll up the data across business units, product portfolios, divisions; the long term entities executives deal with in strategic planning.

 

Work at the summary level before the detail level (control accounts). Perhaps top level project metrics first, before detailed EVM data from within the projects. Keep the paperwork down. Executives need top level data, not detailed data. If some division has poor performance it can be investigated even in the absence of detailed EVM data. Once EVM in sold and embraced the rigor can be added. "Don't' sell EVM, sell performance", according to Neely.

 

  

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EVPrep™ and EVM Workshops

The following workshops are planned for the following locations:

  • Reston, VA
  • Salt Lake City, UT

Earned Value Experience (CAM) Workshop (14 PDUs)

 

You'll experience creating an earned value management baseline, determining earned value from project status, calculating earned value management indices, and estimating final cost and completion date. This workshop is perfect for team leads, control account managers, financial and schedule control staff, project and program managers, and chief project officers.

 

Excel EzEVM™Templates may be retained by attendees to implement earned value management in their organization.

 

Locations and Dates

 

View the Earned Value Experience workshop outline and get the registration form.

 

Interested in an on-site workshop? Send an e-mail with your your address and the number of attendees to receive a quote. 

 

EVPrep Exam Prep Workshop (14 PDUs)

 

The workshop covers all the topics likely covered in the exam and provides exam-like questions and workshop discussion about each question and the possible answers. This workshop also includes an EVM analysis question to help prepare you for the three page written essay in Part II (was part IV).

 

Take this workshop and save $150 on the exam. Attendees are given a temporary limited membership in AACE that allows you to take the exam at AACE member rates.

 

Locations and Dates 

 

This is twelve hours of mock EVP exam and discussions of correct and incorrect answers.

  

Do you have an EVP FAQ
 
  
 

View the EVPrep workshop outline and get the registration form.

 

Interested in an on-site workshop? Send an e-mail with your your address and the number of attendees to receive a quote.

 

Upcoming EVM and PM Conferences

 

Construction CPM Conference

(CPM as in Critical Path Method, not affiliated with the College of Perf. Mgmt.)

WHEN: January 27-30, 2013

WHERE: New Orleans, LA

MORE INFO: www.ConstructionCPM.com

 

PMI Australia Conference

When: 18-19 March 2013

Where: Frankfurt, Germany

More Info: Project Zone 

 

PM Global Gov and Controls Symposium

When: 9-10 April 2013

Where: Canberra, Australia

More Info: http://wired.ivvy.com/event/GCSM13/ 

 

APM Scotland Conference

WHEN: 17 April 2013

WHERE: Edinburgh, Scotland

MORE INFO: APM Scotland

 

PMI Project Zone Conference

When: 1-3 May 2013

Where: Sydney, NWS, Australia

More Info: PMI Australia

 

EVM WORLD 2013

(Focused tracks on Earned Schedule, US Gov't, and Agile+EVM)

WHEN: 29-31 May 2013

WHERE: Naples, FL

MORE INFO: CPM

 

AACE International's Annual Meeting

WHEN: 30 June - 3 July 2013

WHERE: Marriott Wardman Park, Washington DC

MORE INFO: AACE 

 

PM Oz 2013

WHEN: 17-18 September 2013

WHERE: Melborne, Victoria, Australia

MORE INFO: PMOz 2013 

 

IPMA World Congress

WHEN: 30 September - 3 October 2013

WHERE: Dubrovnik, Croatia

MORE INFO: IPMC World Congress 

 

Integrated Program Management Conference

WHEN: 18-20 November 2013

WHERE: Bethesda, MD

MORE INFO: CPM 

 

EVM Europe 2013

WHEN: 4-5 December 2013

WHERE: University of Ghent, Belgium

MORE INFO: EVM Europe 

 

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College of Performance Management
2013 Board is On The Job

   

With the arrival of 2013 the College of Performance Management's (CPM's) new board is at the helm.

board  

In 2012 about half the board positions were up for election. In the Fall of 2013 the remaining positions should consider running for a 2013 board open position. (It should be good for PMI PDUs and AACE recertification points. {Each organization make the determination on what activities may provide certification PDUs or credits.})

 

The 2013 board is:

Gary W. Troop, President 

Ray Stratton, Executive Vice President *

Lauren Bone, Vice President, Administration 

Barry Schuler, Vice President, Conferences and Events* 

Kim Hunter, Vice President, Education and Certification

 

Buddy Everage, Vice President, Finance*

Kym Henderson, Vice President, Research and Standards*

Mark Phillips, Vice President, Communications

Susan Wood, Immediate Past President

 

* Up for election November 2013

 

Contact information for each officer is on the CPM Website .

 

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Be Friends First

Make a list of your friends. Real friends, not just Facebook friends. Is your customer counterpart in this list? They should be. When I worked forfriends  Raytheon all the program managers got a "Little Living Book". In it were nuggets of knowledge from seasoned program managers. Here's one nugget.

 

A manager tells the story of meeting his counterpart while heading up a program called Peace Shield. It was a huge and complex air defense and command and control system that was delivered six months early and with an under run. (How?)
 

Contract value: $837 million USD, fixed price! (Seventeen radars, 165 sites, one command and control center, five sector control centers, and interfaces to multiple national communication systems.) For those who count lines of software code...over one million of them.

 

The Raytheon PM describes meeting the government PM. When a Colonel became the USAF PM he came to California. What is the first thing you would do? The first thing the Raytheon and Government PMs did was to meet for dinner. They got to know each other socially. Work would be for tomorrow.

 

Know your customer as a friend first. Know their spouse's name and their kid's names. Know their interests and weekend activities. Be able to call the PM at home on the weekend to tell them, "We have a serious problem that will be reported to your office on Monday. I just want you to know ahead of time."

 

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Do you have news to share?  Send your news item and we'll review it for posting in a future EVM Newsletter.
 
Sincerely,
 
Ray Stratton, PMP, EVP
Management Technologies

Copyright 2013, Management Technologies  

The EVM Newsletter, EVPrep, The Earned Value Management Maturity Model, EVM3, EzEVM, CAMcert, and The Earned Value Experience are trademarks of Management Technologies.

 

The Earned Value Professional, EVP, and the AEP logo
 are marks of the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering, International. (AACEŽ).

 

The PMP, PMBOK, PMI, and R.E.P. , and the Registered Education Provider logo are
registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

 

EVM World is a
registered trademark of the College of Performance Management, Inc.