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What Really Motivates?
Sometimes They Just Don’t Know!

by Darrell Glen Stiffler, PMP: Victor Vroom’s Expectancy theory has been around about 53 years now and is consider one of staples of Motivational Theory. The subject pops up a lot when studying project management. Although Vroom’s…
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SME Creep: When a Project Manager Slowly Loses
Authority to a Subject Matter Expert

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP: Subject matter experts (SMEs) are generally a very valuable asset to a project manager (PM). However, as a PM, you must be prudent in how much authority and control is given to or taken by a SME. Additionally,…
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A Different Approach to Practice Testing for PMP Certification

by Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP: If you are preparing to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) examination, I have an idea I would like to share. You have probably been told the best way to prepare for the exam is to take as many…
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The Sponsor’s Role in a Project is Imperfectly Clear – One Man’s Humorous Journey to Understand It

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP: When battling through a project, the Project Manager’s (PM’s) closest ally should be the Project Sponsor (PS).  However, there is confusion when talking to different people in exactly what the responsibilities…
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Have Your Cake and Eat It to PPT

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP: If you can have your cake and eat it, too, why can’t you have multiple PowerPoint slides and your notes ON ONE PAGE? YOU CAN! When using PowerPoint, have you ever wanted to print multiple slides on one page…
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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.