Quick YouTube Tour of PMP Exam Sim

The latest version of my PMP Exam Simulator features over 1000 unique questions, diagnostic review, and testing by knowledge area, PMBoK 4th Edition coverage, and much more. View the video and/or visit my products page at www.frugalpmp.com. The video:

Business Landscape of 2010 - Part 1

I was recently asked by Raymond Smith, MBA, CISA, PMP, ITIL: "What do you think the world business landscape would look like in 2010 and what viable strategy should businesses adopt given the current environment?"

There are many ideas spinning in my brain on just that subject or thereabouts. I will say in this installment of an answer to that question that off the top of my noggin I can say that the business educational landscape in 2010 and beyond will be characterized more by certifications than traditional education. You can see the movement of traditional colleges and universities toward their support of the well endowed certs like CPA, EA, PMP and so on. They have always been supportive of MD, AIA, bar exams and other test-driven professional designations. The trend continues with great aggression. Why not get ahead of the curve by adding to your certification study arsenal an Exam Simulator. Mine is best for the PMP and EA and others. It is diagnostic and as Windows software does not require an Internet connection. Get going, pass your cert on your first sitting by practicing questions. The blog sidebar has the links, or go to for PMP or for EA, CISSP, Oracle, PHP, Java, Networking, BO/CRCP, and more ....

Exam Simulators rigorously keep your study program honest and well budgeted. Take it from me, as it helped me become a PMP and more...

PMP Exam Simulation by Knowledge Area

Ok, there are a few exam simulators on the market. Mine is the best. It is developed by an accomplished programmer, experienced with MS Windows development since 1985, and who also happens to be a Project Management Professional. Unlike other exam simulators developed on contract or from a "kit" for "pure PMPs" (who don't write code), mine is very flexible, allowing you to choose amongst KAs - knowledge areas, and use simulation software as a complete diagnostic learning platform. Have you seen the new Star Trek movie? In that movie, the Vulcan's - an advanced race of humanoids learned everything by Question/Answer/Explanation and simulation. My simulator and the PMBoK is about all you need to pass your exam on the first sitting. I guarantee that if you simulate 80% of the more than 1000 questions in my software in several test sessions over the course of your PMBoK study you will pass your exam. Take a look at the feature list for my PMP Exam Sim. I am constantly improving it. I listen to my customer suggestions, and unlike other PMP simulators, there are no middlemen between my customers and me, so the PMP is the programmer. I get it done! Do yourself a professional favor and buy my PMP Exam sim.

Qualifying New Hires for Your Team

One of your biggest responsibilities as a Project Manager is to build a winning team. Building that team means recruiting and hiring the best people. In difficult economic times, resumes typically become extreme hyperbole. One study found that 70% of candidate resumes over stated their skill set mastery by a significant margin. Isn't it better to have a concrete assessment in hand to gauge a particular candidates skill set? Require your candidates take a skill set test. There are many candidate assessment web services. One thing they all lack is the ability to control the test taker candidate's access to sites that can help with the answers. A job candidate taking a web-based skills assessment has a world of reference material available to use as a "crib". The better policy is to use a stand-alone computer at your facility for testing candidates. My certification exam simulators, originally built as rich client Windows software to help PMPs, EAs and other IT professionals become certified can be customized to your specs as an in-house secure, proctored, test center for job candidate validation. A web service may be an "easy and high-tech" testing platform, but don't you want candidates who answer using their brain and not the brain of the "global community of the Internet"? Contact me, the frugal PMP for more information.

Automation for Lean Times

Every organization today wants to get faster, better, cheaper results. One way to achieve this is to apply one or more of the many available virtual business process automation tools. These tools are built to script, and or via visual IDEs, hook together both Windows and Web applications into composite apps, dashboards, new virtual working environments and even work flow existing legacy with newer web service apps to create end to end business processes that have little to no seams between them, i.e., "seamless" interfaces. These virtual automation tools are often immature pieces of software, so be prepared to team or partner your interested existing SME/non-programmer types with an experienced dual or more platform (Win/Web/OS) experienced analyst and get kinks worked out with the vendor until a solution is reached. Documented requirements should not go by the wayside either. As always, it helps to make sure everyone is on the same page with a solid sheaf of requirements and plan. A PMP should be able to help negotiate the still turbid waters of cross-platform automation tooling with her background in requirements writing and team management. You are not a PMP? Well, then, there is no better way to pass your Project Management Professional exam than to simulate the test center environment with my simulator at: www.frugalpmp.com.

The Benefits of PMP Exam Prep with an Exam Simulator

Only a fraction of candidates who sit for the Project Management Professionals (PMP) exam pass on their first sitting. Understandably the likelihood of passing on subsequent attempts increases with each attempt to pass, because after all practice does make perfect as the old saw goes.

Isn't it more cost effective to sit for your PMP exam once and pass the first time? Failure to pass that first time may cause you professional harm, and certainly cost to re-take the exam and time to continue your study.

Use of an exam simulator, particularly mine for practice of exam center conditions with exam caliber questions has several benefits:

• Easy to use
  
• Lowers your risk of failing
  
• Increases your chance of passing on the first sitting
  
• Instead of exam practice with the real exam you practice before you get there
  
• A software product developed by a PMP for PMP candidates
  
• A truly dynamic, interactive learning tool, sans droning lectures or static material
  
• My PMP Exam Simulator diagnoses your strength and weakness by PMBoK knowledge area
  
• Helps you budget your last minute preparation
  

It works. I used an early version of about 100 questions to help me pass the exam on my first sitting. Now with ten times that number, updated to conform to the new PMBoK 4th edition, I offer it to help you pass on the first try.

To purchase securely with paypal goto: www.frugalpmp.com I guarantee you will be delighted.

PMP Exam Simulator works on Apple

By permission, I am quoting a user of my PMP Exam Sim for Windows who got it to easily work on a MAC: I have VMware Fusion running Windows-Vista home for my PC needs. Works Great (especially when I am forced from Merlin to Project). BUT I often forget that I can not extract all files in the Mac environment then import them into the Windows environment? Once I dropped the ZIPed file into the folder I created in Windows then uncompressed from there, she started up.

Thanks for creating this... It will be a big help for me.

Project Management Diplomacy

So often we we meet people who are Project Managers by political influence.

Who completes your federal tax return? HR Block or a CPA. I prefer a CPA. There is no way that I have yet found to treat PMs who have no desire to be PMPs to the benefits of our profession. They are there and that's it. They may be sincere and try their best to "manage", but often they do not carry their people with them by anything but brute force, not to mention completely ignore even the basics of integration, scope, time, risk, and other areas of formal management that are second nature to a PMP.

It may sound a bit too dramatic to say that a shadow hangs over the project management profession. What I mean to say is that yes there are some non-PMP project managers who are good ones. Because of the stringent requirements for experience and testing, and a strict code of ethics it is much more likely that a PMP is a good PM. I have met far too many project managers who had little experience, formal education in management, and people acumen to be worthy of their project manager title.

If you have a desire to be a PMP and thereby prove that you have satisfied the basic requirements of a true profession, then you may want to consider buying my High Performance PMP Exam Simulator to help you practice questions diagnostically. Practicing exam questions under exam-like conditions is one of the best ways to ensure you budget your study time wisely and then pass your PMP exam.

FrugalPMP Exam Simulator Updated to PMBoK 4th Edition

The PMBoK 3rd Edition is valid for PMP Exams through June 2009. From then on you will need to know the 4th Edition PMBoK. My PMP Exam Simulator is now updated to the new PMBoK, with hundreds of new questions, bringing the total questions almost to 1000! What a bargain!

Economists as Social Scientists

Since Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations in 1776, economists have claimed to be social scientists. Does economics rank among the sciences? In a present economy in so much turmoil where is the economist hero with a solution? In 1969 the Nobel Prize for economic science was established, so here we are in 2009 very much in need of an economic panacea. Where is the mathematical and statistical analysis that will trump the vague literary economics that as a minimal line of reason escapes the laymen? Let us return to a tome from E.F. Shumacher who subverted economic science by calling it all into question? Click here to find Shumacher's text and many others that will tune you into what is going on today.

Better for the PM to not be a "know it all"...

Charles Dickens wrote in the classic "Hard Times": "If he had only learned a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!"

A quick way to passing your PMP exam: FrugalPMP.com

John Madden announced his retirement today. So what has that got to do with PMPs or becoming one? I will tell you that a search of the PMBoK 4th edition .pdf file for the word "coach" gets a first hit on page 41 where "...a primary function of a PMO is to support project managers in a variety of ways which may include ... Coaching, mentoring, training, and oversight". Isn't that neat, that we can look to John Madden as a role model?

If we Google Wikipedia, we find that "Coaching" includes motivational speaking, as well as the commonly presumed instruction and training activities. Sooo, as "coaches" are we not relating to the communication knowledge area of the PMBoK? I think we are.

My PMP Exam Simulator, by the way, now includes (version 5) a "Coach" button that explains the practice exam answers, and in many cases provides a reference or source. This exam simulator is one of the proven quickest ways to study and pass your PMP Exam on the first sitting - and at a fraction of the cost of the more well-known exam sims (by RM - but who is mentioning names here). Buy it - and you will pass at: www.frugalpmp.com

Watch football and become a better coach!

SOA and BPM

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a popular tech topic these days. SOA involves Web services standards and promises improvement in support of enterprise software.

SOA has many forms, including XML, BPEL, UML and other related acronyms. I think some of the features of SOA that are worth considering, particularly for those of us who have to maintain booger software are:

Component Reuse
Organizational Agility
Leveraging Existing Systems

You may want to see the Crosstalk article by Geoffrey Raines, copyright 2009 by the Mitre Corp. on Leveraging Federal IT Investment With Service Oriented Architecture, as it provides a solid definition of SOA today amongst context for Federal system engineering.

Perusing BPM on the web as I have of late, I find BMP to be closely related to SOA. SOA may in fact be the services that BPM requires as processes to manage in the ultimate sense.

There is a myriad of standards, including BPEL, that may help provide the linkage to SOA. Any analysis toward the SOA end likely requires charting of the processes involved, and UML 2.0 may be a good starting point.

Frank Saladis Speaks at PMI Northeast FL Chapter

Frank Saladis, current Chairman of EdSig for the PMI gave a rousing after dinner talk this evening to the Northeast Florida Chapter of the PMI. His topic was "Team Building and Influencing Skills for Project Leaders". I came away from the meeting a little smarter I think and will relay a sketchy list of points I remember that may be worthy of further thought and discussion:

• Influencing is about improving communication skills. All project should be WOW projects, get excited about the project and so will your team. Ask good questions. Deal with problems, get a hold of the problem. Ineffective project managers don't ask and don't listen.
  
• Acknowledge people. The world is full of people who deserve to be acknowledged. Acknowledge someone near you. Acknowledge someone you are jealous of.
  
• A leader in motion stays in motion, like Newton's first law says. Influence is all around us.
  
• Forcing someone does not work. First understand, then strive to be understood. Bullying does not work. Communication is two way.
  
• Listening is important, active listening is even more important.
  
• Communication is %80 non-verbal.
  
• Technical skills are not as important as leadership, organizing and planning, interpersonal, negotiation, team building, and being technically credible.
  
• Characteristics of influential people include vision and humility.
  
• In a high performance team the team selects the MVP.
  
• Teamwork includes seizing setbacks, keeping one set of books, and a winning attitude which excites others to get on board.
  
• Participative leadership shares responsibility, aligns on purpose, gets others to support the same vision, and understands what teams want.
  
• First impressions are very important.
  
• You don't have to like everyone. Get past dislikes, focus on what needs to be done.
  
• Show sincere interest in people.
  
  

If you are not a Professional Project Manager (PMP) already, consider becoming certified. One way to an exam pass on the first try is to practice all the questions you can in a test center setting. My PMP Exam Simulator may help you do just that.

PMBoK Guide 4th Edition - PMP Candidates for 2009

The PMBoK Guide 4th edition has been released by the PMI. If you are a Project Management Professional (PMP) candidate who plans to sit for the exam prior to July, 2009, you should know the PMBoK 3rd edition backwards and front. From July onwards, make sure you know the differences between the new edition (4th) and the old (3rd). My PMP Exam Simulator featured at www.frugalpmp.com has over 750 questions,answers and explanations, and can help you study, budget your study time (it is diagnostic), and boost your chance of passing on your first sitting. It currently reflects the 3rd edition material, but I am in the process of updating to be ready for those of you planning to sit after June, 2009. If you buy now, you will get a free update of the software updated for PMBoK 4th edition. Please check it out. It is one of the best investments in your future you will make. I am an MBA, PMP, practicing technical PM, and professional educator. I know how you need to study.

V_Grep, the better Windows explorer...

Microsoft would do well to check out V-Grep, a program distributed freely, as PostCardWare, where you can download the software for free, then send a postcard to the developer, Piotr Chodzinski, who has, by offering this powerful program to help you search your Windows computer or server, the power of Unix/Linux GREP with a visual interface, supporting regular expressions. Software Engineering, certified frugal, PMP that I am, I jumped on this, sent a postcard from Blue Ridge, GA, and hope Piotr gets an offer of virtual employment from a solid, progressive software company soon, if not already. Check it out!