In a new business you need to communicate business plans internally with your team, to the board, and to current and potential investors.

Everyone understands a plan in GamePlan because it is presented visually on the GamePlan Whiteboard.
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Understanding the plan promotes buy-in from the team, encourages relevant questions from the board, and gives investors confidence in the business.                 

​They say screen time is bad for your mental health, but what about Excel? You have endless rows of data, but does it help you jump start your projects? Save your seat to learn how to light a fire under your spreadsheets and make your life easier. Signup for the webinar here.

* Quickly import your entire project spreadsheet into PI
* Watch your Excel data automate right before your eyes
* Direct traffic with predecessor and successor tasks
* Get live updates of resources, start/end dates, and workflow

projectinsight.com/apps/webinar-registration?c=20211116-li-howtoexcelLearn how from Cejih Yung during an upcoming webinar on Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 10:30am PT. Signup here.

Web3, also known as Web 3.0, is an idea for a version of the Internet that is decentralized and based on public blockchains. The concept gained popularity in 2020 and 2021 with interest from cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investments from high-profile technologists and companies. 

Do you need to care?

That's up to you - but being informed at least at a high level is usually a good idea... especially if you are tech advanced enough to be led here by where you came from or clicked on.

The Evolution of the Web
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The web has evolved a lot over the years, and the applications of it today are almost unrecognizable from its most early days. The evolution of the web is often partitioned into three separate stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0.

What is Web 1.0?

Web 1.0 was the first iteration of the web. Most participants were consumers of content, and the creators were typically developers who build websites that contained information served up mainly in text or image format. Web 1.0 lasted approximately from 1991 to 2004.
Web 1.0 consisted of sites serving static content instead of dynamic HTML. Data and content were served from a static file system rather than a database, and sites didn't have much interactivity at all.

You can think of Web 1.0 as the read-only web.

What is Web 2.0?

Most of us have primarily experienced the web in its current form, commonly referred to as web2. You can think of web2 as the interactive and social web.

In the web2 world, you don’t have to be a developer to participate in the creation process. Many apps are built in a way that easily allows anyone to be a creator.

If you want to craft a thought and share it with the world, you can. If you want to upload a video and allow millions of people to see it, interact with it, and comment on it, you can do that too.

Web2 is simple, really, and because of its simplicity more and more people around the world are becoming creators.
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And now Web 3.0

In web3, developers don't usually build and deploy applications that run on a single server or that store their data in a single database (usually hosted on and managed by a single cloud provider).

Instead, web3 applications either run on blockchains, decentralized networks of many peer to peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that forms a cryptoeconomic protocol. These apps are often referred to as dapps (decentralized apps), and you will see that term used often in the web3 space.

To achieve a stable and secure decentralized network, network participants (developers) are incentivized and compete to provide the highest quality services to anyone using the service.

When you hear about web3, you'll notice that cryptocurrency is often part of the conversation. This is because cryptocurrency plays a big role in many of these protocols. It provides a financial incentive (tokens) for anyone who wants to participate in creating, governing, contributing to, or improving one of the projects themselves.

These protocols may often offer a variety of different services like compute, storage, bandwidth, identity, hosting, and other web services commonly provided by cloud providers in the past.

People can make a living by participating in the protocol in various ways, in both technical and non-technical levels.

Consumers of the service usually pay to use the protocol, similarly to how they would pay a cloud provider like AWS today. Except in web3, the money goes directly to the network participants.

In this, like in many forms of decentralization, you'll see that unnecessary and often inefficient intermediaries are cut out.

Calling all Project Managers - what PM topics or issues bother you the most. What do you need the most help with or want to read good content about? For now, choose from this list of 4 topics...

• How to Run Great Meetings
• Project Communication Issues
• Managing Project Financials
• Running an Effective PMO

I'm running a poll on LinkedIn. You can either vote there with this link or vote on this site... Totals will be combined and revealed in one week. Thanks in advance for your much appreciated input!

LinkedIn poll

Ok, I know that all professional certifications aren’t bunk. I know that there are some very real and necessary certifications in the IT world and in many other professions that are absolutely essential to show that you have the knowledge to perform the work at the level necessary to be successful. And even if that’s not exactly the case – meaning your experience and knowledge will carry you through without the certification – you still need it to even be considered a viable option for the work. Period.


But do you ever feel like your certification isn’t serving you well? You spent all of that money and the job offers still aren’t pouring in? Or perhaps it’s the other way around. You don’t have the certification but you do have the experience and yet you’re being weeded out early in the job search process because you’re missing a preferred certification. Welcome to the job hunt world where certifications seem to be human resources (HR) way of saying, “I’m going to coast through this job search process!” Seriously, I sometimes think that certifications are HR’s way of pressing the ‘easy button.’


I decided to pose several related questions to project management, IT, and business professionals in general. I was looking for was answers to the following questions in order to gain an understanding of the perceived, or even actual, value of certifications to the respondent’s careers and job searches. The questions were:

• Do you have a professional certification? If so, what certification?
  
• Has it been beneficial to your career or job search?
  
• Are there any certifications that you feel are especially necessary?
  
• Any that are useless vs. experience?
  
• Finally, please make any comments you wish concerning certifications vs. real-world job experience that you feel strongly about.
  

The answers to the first four questions were designed to get some specific industry and certification information to compare the last question’s responses against. What I found was it really didn’t matter what industry or certification someone held, the overall feelings about the certifications were still basically the same. The real relevance – for the purpose of this article – was the answers to that final question….how do you feel certifications match up to real-world job experience.


Here are some insightful, anonymous quotes that I received from the survey:

• “Most certifications are nice to have, but shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
  
• “A professional credential without experience is silly…”
  
• “Certifications get you past the HR screening process…”
  
• “Experience counts, but certification opens the door…”
  
• “Nobody has asked for my certifications…experience is better…”
  
• “Certification has helped in knowledge, but not in salary or getting a better job…”
  
• Certifications are for HR...as it is easy to rule out candidates rather than focusing on their experience.”
  
• “I believe all certifications are nothing more than a formality. They will help "orient" you to the subject matter, but are nothing compared to real world experience.”
  
• “I feel like certifications are just another keyword for excluding job candidates.”
  
• “I think certifications are a year or more behind real world job skills.”
  
• “Many certifications become commoditized lessening their value… Some Microsoft certifications have gone that way. Anyone can get it by reading a book and writing the exam with no experience. A certification without tangible, related experience is meaningless.”
  

That last one sums up my own view fairly well. My soapbox has been the project management professional (PMP) certification. I’ve worked with numerous project managers without PMP certification and several with certification. The experienced project manager who lacks PMP certification has proven more competent and more successful than the lesser-experienced, PMP-certified project manager every time.


Because of the low requirements to pass the exam (61% correct answers) and the minimal experience required to be allowed to sit for the exam (35 hours of PM training and 4500 hours of real PM work experience), to specifically require that a candidate have PMP to even be considered for a project management position automatically leaves out extremely experienced and qualified candidates. It’s a lazy HR hiring process and it means that the organization will not likely be hiring the best available candidate.


That said, I think most will agree that spending the time, money, and energy to prepare for and attain any certification that is relevant – maybe even beneficial – to your chosen career shows a certain level of dedication and perseverance. It can also help level the playing field in terms of like-mindedness and a consistent vocabulary amongst colleagues and project teammates.


In today’s job market with unemployment high, salaries low, and approximately five unemployed job seekers for every one available job, HR departments have to do something to sift through the mass of resumes and candidates they are faced with while screening for each job. For certain specific fields – including many in the IT industry – certifications can become an easy (albeit somewhat misguided) way to sort through the piles of applications and the emailed resumes to get down to a more manageable few. Left in the dust, obviously, will be many extremely experienced and well-qualified candidates. And yes, probably the best candidate for the job in many cases. But you have to hang your hat on something and for HR it is often the required certification.


Finally, one survey responder summed it up well when they stated…

• “Experience plus certification is much better. Typically an experienced person with a certification shows that they at least try to touch different aspects of their field.”
  

Getting the certification shows some effort and dedication to your field. When looked at from the job applicant’s perspective as they are trying to differentiate themselves from the rest of the field, that’s one matter they can take into their own hands and possibly land a valuable spot in that final pool of candidates.

With Proggio PPM tool you can effortlessly manage your project portfolio on a collaborative timeline with the ultimate clarity and visibility.

Attain Clarity

Know the status of all your projects in a snapshot.

Achieve Managerial Alignment

Alignment towards company goals is easy with a portfolio bird’s-eye view.

Enable Engagement

Get all stakeholders to seamlessly contribute to the project portfolio view with unlimited users.

Book a demo or try it for free today!

Do you wish you had the right project management tool that could visualize the project and create a realistic plan for you? Something that you and your project team and your development team could follow that would be realistic and achievable? 

GamePlan can do this for you...

Let GamePlan calculate realistic release dates. Your team will never be expected to do more than is possible. 

Signup here and get your free trial of GamePlan today. See how it can put your projects on a successful path right now with realistic schedules you and your project team members and customers can be satisfied with.

You would like to think that a bunch of talented professionals working on a tech project could set aside egos and work together productively toward the common goal – a successful project solution. Nine times out ten… actually probably more like 99 times out of 100 - they can. But with a bunch of talented egos working on a project it can sometimes spur disagreements on next steps, the solution or who should be doing what and when. It makes the project manager’s job harder, it can cause re-work or extra hours to tasks and can cause customer concerns and the quality of one or more deliverables may suffer.
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Let’s consider what I think are 5 key actions toward a successful risk mitigation strategy and a positive move forward following such occurrences.

Aggregate. This is not as easy as it sounds – and is the reason for conflicts and ego clashes on the project team or in any work situation for that matter. You come into any project engagement with sometimes a very broad mix of responsibilities, experience levels, expertise, egos and sometimes even allegiances. The project manager must mold that mix into a like-driven forward moving, same-goal oriented team whose one goal is project success. Sounds easy? No, it’s not. But the experienced project manager can likely handle it by setting boundaries at the beginning of the engagement and everyone else who leads projects may have to “fake it till they make it.” The experience must start somewhere.

Your customer has a budget ready for the project. Great. But that doesn’t necessarily indicate that they are really prepared for the project. Can you go forward? Yes, definitely. But how prepared they actually are will affect the project schedule – and even the mindset or team – that you head in with to the project. Never, ever, just assume they are ready.
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We would like to think that our customer – the one who is spending the money – has been diligent in their preparation for the upcoming engagement that you are about to lead for them. It only makes sense, right? If they are prepared, that means smoother sailing, possibly a shortened project window, and a decreased project budget. Cost savings for the customer! A good thing, right? One would think so, but I never cease to be amazed…

What should your customer come to the table with? Well, at a minimum, they should have the following: