Management Scholars Academy

(Come to the blog to see the greeting card) BTW Next free PMP orientation program  - 8th Jan, Next PMP boot camp – 22,23,29 and 30 Jan

By God’s grace, we had 27 PMs participating the December month PMP boot camp. They were from IBM, HCL, Wipro, Visteon, Patni, Cognizant, Dell, PayPal, Verizon, Frost and Sullivan, BWIR, TelcorIndia, 3i infotech, and Lycos.

When I founded MS Academy in December 2009, I thought I will give myself one year to evaluate the results from the venture. At the end of November 2010, when I took stock, I was happy with the impact we made in the market, especially the terrific positive impact on the confidence level of the Project Managers who attended our training programs, but the bottom line from a business view was not very encouraging.

Hope you got a glimpse of the new MS Academy PMP Question bank online.

The Nov month PMP boot camp went well with 12 PMs participating this time. They were from HP, CA Technologies, HCL, TCS, Paypal, Enoah, Symantec, iNautix, Softcrylic and Vlinksys. I invited Mr.Balajee Viswanath who is a senior software project manager, currently leading the PMO efforts at Visteon Software to hand over the certificates. Balajee attended the MS Academy PMP boot camp in October and cleared PMP within 10 days from course completion. He shared tips on how to prepare for PMP exam. He recommended that the participants take all elements of the boot camp like EZ Dump, Baseline tests, stretching exercise etc. seriously, attempt a few question banks after the boot camp and just go give the exam with confidence.

Save Paper Save Trees Save Earth. Please don’t print this e-mail unless you really need to.

Some of you could have noticed this sentence in our email signature. But we were printing at least a 1000 sheets to administer tests in our PMP training program every month. We wanted to go green and so we explored options to conduct our PMP baseline tests online. Some of our students suggested moodle !Lo and behold! we have an MS Academy PMP Question bank online.

In the context of PMBoK, I had only learnt about the different leadership styles that I discussed in the last post. In the Laserwords PMP program, Mr.Chandra Kalluri VP-HR, Laserwords explained the concept “situational leadership styles”. He gave examples on how depending on your employees’ competences in their task areas and commitment to the task, the leadership style of PM may vary from one person to another. PMs may also lead the same person one way sometimes and another way at other times. I guess the picture on the top explains it well. You can also think of when you have used a directing vs coaching vs supporting vs delegating / empowering style to manage people and tasks.

O.S.Balaji sent me this deepavali greeting. Let me also wish you all a happy and prosperous deepavali through this creative card.

The October month MS Academy PMP boot camp concluded well this Sunday (10th Oct) with 12 PMs from IBM, Wipro, Visteon, HSBC, CSC and Graderesults joining us. I had invited Mr.Chandrashekar Kalluri VP-HR and training, Laserwords, to distribute the certificates on the last day and share his experience. Mr.Chandra shared his experience of the same PMP training that MS Academy conducted at Laserwords itself. He said, “After Ganapathy and team conducted PMP training at our place, we are all talking only in PMBoK terms. We have formed study groups. We organize special classes for additional inputs. For example I am planning to take a session on HR and communication. The CFO is going to conduct a session on cost etc. I suggest that you also use group study to be successful in this exam.

We concluded the first batch of PMP training program to 23 PMs and above at Laserwords last Sunday and what a great time it was! The batch had Mr.Chandrashekar Kalluri VP-HR and Training, Mr.Annamalai, Head-Quality and many of the Cluster Leads, almost all the shakers and movers of the company. Earlier, as Mr.Krishna Pera, their COO suggested, I met 9 of the participants over two weeks and learnt about their business. I incorporated that learning into the PMP program and shared it with my other trainers also. This proved to be a worthwhile investment during the training. That is what I meant by learning through teaching.

The September month PMP boot camp concluded well on 19th Sep with 15 PMs from Wipro, TCS, HP, RR Donnelley, Oracle, iNautix, CSS Corp, Mahindra Satyam and Omnitechsys participating this time. I heard the feedback I have been wanting to hear all these months – “We are going to cherish the memories of this PMP boot camp much more than even clearing PMP” “This training can be done just for learning sake. PMP is just a by-product”. I forward all the compliments to my trainers who are making this program a great success.

I have been invited to address the MBA, BBA and B.Com students at Sri Sankara Arts and Science College at Kanchipuram on 3rd Sep as part of “Margadarshan 2010″ their two day National Symposium. I feel honored to be part of the program and putting together the message I want to give them. If you got an opportunity to address the future leaders of this country, what will be your message? Please share it as as comments in the blog or send me mail.

Thanks for the mails. Here is the message I gave them http://msacademy.in/wordpress/?p=1003

I see that many of my friends let the PMP credential expire because they find accruing PDUs difficult. Actually it is very easy. You can get 15 PDU for just being in project management profession; Another 15 for self directed learning; You can get 10 PDUs for speaking or writing on project management; More PDUs for attending training programs on project management etc. So 60 PDUs in 3 years is quite easy if you just want to do it.