Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Breaking in to the Blogging World

Today is November 12, 2008. A day when I have taken the dive into blogging world. Although a few friends of mine have had blogs for years now, I resisted the fad, until today.

In the coming days, months, & hopefully years, I will be sharing my ideas on project management through this blog. Ideas about what project management is, what I think it should be, and what I hope it will become.

I am a recent recipient of the PMP certification (last year), so, at the moment, my ideas and thoughts may appear to be limited by one methodology, but I hope to acquire knowledge regarding other methodologies as well.

I have also mostly worked in the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, so, again, most of my experience relates to that industry, though I will make every attempt to generalize my thoughts, or at the least illustrate how the concepts and ideas presented may be implemented in other industries as well.

The purposes of this blog will be the following:
1. To post my ideas about project management
2. To increase my project management knowledge, while searching for topics to blog about
3. To work on my literary skills while posting my blogs
4. To network with people interested in learning and sharing their knowledge about project management.

Well, that's all I have for now. I hope that I will gain a lot of knowledge & relationships through blogging & networking with the readers of my blog (maybe I'll be lucky enough to finally have my own stalker!!).

© 2008 Saad Farooqi

5 comments:

Ayman Nassar said...

welcome to blogging, remove these ads, sometimes u cant control, and u find some embarrassing ads on yr professional blog

Anonymous said...

Good luck with your new blog! Look forward to seeing posts.

Dr. PDG said...

Saad,
It concerns me that you are citing Rita Mulcahy as an "authority" on project management.

Why not cite Kerzner, Lewis or Wideman or a host of other, highly regarded professional practitioners/academics?

I happen to subscribe to the thinking of Wideman et al that Scope, Cost, Time and Quality form the "Tetrad Trade Off, and that risk and quality are embedded items. If you look at one of the old PMBOK's, it was broken down into the core (scope, time, cost, quality) and supporting, (risk, HR, procurement and communications) knowledge areas. At some point, the supporting were "elevated" to be of equal importance. While I can understand why (a chain is only as strong at the weakest link) it also distorts the focus of what most project managers actually have, or should have, control over.

For example, how many project managers are allowed or enabled to select their own core team members?

And my biggest concern revolves around the focus on customer satisfaction at the expense of the other stakeholders, especially the shareholders of the company.

IMPO, one of the major elements holding up the professionalization of project management is our lack of fiduciary obligation to the stakeholders and being held legally accountable to them for our errors or omissions. Sarbanes Oxley has started us down that road, but what about worker safety? Or the environment? We cannot look ONLY at the customer. Not if we are to be true professionals.

Wassalam,

Dr. PDG, Jakarta

Dr. PDG said...

Whoops.... Errata...... Risk and HUMAN RESOURCES are embedded.....

Dr. PDG said...

Another thought, Saad,
PMI represents but one perspective. While they are certainly the largest, they are not necessarily the most highly respected in terms of the quality of their products.

AACE www.aacei.org has, IMPO, much higher quality technical content, and IPMA has a journal that is more highly respected than the PMI journal.

So now that you have your PMP, which is, IMPO, nothing more than an entry level credential, I would challenge you to move on to explore what other organizations offer in terms of technical knowledge and credentials.

Wassalam,

Dr. PDG, Jakarta