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Pushing Yourself to Higher Performance

On Saturdays, all belt levels in my Haidong Gumdo program show up for practice. Last Saturday, I was the total new kid on the block with many experienced people in the class. I could choose
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Try Reverse Brainstorming

by Vicki Wrona, PMP We are all familiar with brainstorming, but its impact is often quite limited due to a number of factors discussed earlier. But have you heard of reverse brainstorming? It is a simple technique which can generate truly…
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Brainstorming: We Know What to Do, Why Don’t We Do it?

By Vicki Wrona, PMP: We all know what brainstorming is and how to do it. Then how come so many people do it so poorly? They think they do it well, but as an observer, I can tell you they don’t. And the ones who are proudest and loudest…
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Reference Materials for Procurement Management

By: Brian Egan I have been doing research on the subject of project procurement management and ventured onto the PMI website to look for reference materials.  There were surprisingly few books available, considering how important procurement activities are to project success. A set of three books that seemed particularly relevant were written by Margaret Gilbert.
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You Node What?

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP For years, the Project Management Institute (PMI) has been touting the virtues of the Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) as the method to use in the Critical Path Methodology (CPM) construction of a network diagram. The network diagram uses boxes or rectangles, referred to as nodes, to represent activities, and by connecting the nodes with arrows it illustrates the logical relationships that exist between the nodes. However, the illustration of a network diagram in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is OK, but the nodes illustrated are poor. In trying to perform the forward pass, backward pass and calculating float the illustration has no value. Because of the PMBOK vacuum of detail and poor illustration of the diagram node, others have used their own style of node for the critical path calculation. There are many different ways to display the node, and un-standardization has allowed the whole subject to become confusing. I propose that PMI publish in the PMBOK a standard node. This would establish a standard and make it easier for all those creating a PDM much easier.
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What Happened to the Triple Constraints Model?

By Darrell G. Stiffler The triple constraints model has been one of the main staples for teaching project management for as long as I can remember. The model is generally represented by a triangle with Scope on the horizontal leg, Time on the left leg, Cost or Resources on the right leg and Quality in the center of the triangle.