PMINJ Sunday Seminar and Symposium on Twitter
By Event Attendees

View the story "PMINJ Sunday Seminar and Symposium" on Storify

PMINJ Corporate Outreach in the Garden State
By Tod Burrus

In another joint session geared toward knowledge sharing between PMINJ and the New Jersey State Office of Information Technology’s PMO, Mike DeLaRosa, MBA, PMP, gave a presentation on Managing Communications to 43 project managers and other key project team members in PMO/OIT, in Trenton. The presentation focused on active listening and non-verbal communication techniques.

Following the training, the participants received a survey to rate Mike’s presentation and the value gained. While just under half the attendees responded to the post-training survey, all 19 respondents found Mike’s session either “Very Good” or “Excellent,” as well as informative and applicable to their jobs.  Specific comments include: The trainer was well versed and made a possible boring subject interesting. And, Mike was able to keep the audience engaged and participative.

Kelly Silverstein, PMO/OIT and Tod Burrus/PMINJ Director of Corporate Outreach coordinated this third session between PMO/OIT and PMINJ. Look for future collaboration between our organizations.

The NJ Tech Conference 2017 sponsored by DataConnectors was focused on CyberSecurity. The March 22 event was held at The Westin in Princeton and open to all PMINJ Chapter members. Our chapter evangelists, pictured on the left took questions from a passersby about PMI, the available certifications and the Chapter. In all 15 attendees signed the Interest sign-up sheet.

What It Takes to Succeed as Head of PMO – Who Do You Have To Be To Run PMO?

I have been interviewing leaders in their field and writing an article series on What It Takes to Succeed as a PMO Leader.

To run a PMO one must be like a mentor, to nurture the PMO with best methodologies and standards. Let the practices become habits. One hat does not fit all situations, when issues come up you must be a good politician, psychiatrist and a philosopher. If you have to be a babysitter, then you are either not doing the right thing or you don’t have the right quality or experience in your people necessary to do the work.

To run a successful Agile PMO one must live by the Agile values, and those values are:

• Individuals and their interactions
• Delivering working products
• Customer collaboration
• Responding to change

Read what other leaders have to say:

Interesting question. It’s a combination. It depends at times. At times certainly acting as a politician. When dealing with multiple business stakeholders you have to act in a politician role and communicate effectively. Focusing on the value that is meaningful to them in a positive way. At times acting as a psychiatrist really probing and soliciting and listening to what are the different needs of the stakeholders. Really asking different types of questions and getting at the heart. So often they’re conveying what they need without really understanding it. It’s about asking different productive, conduct elicitation meetings, and getting question at the heart and value of what they want to achieve, and the success around that. From a philosopher putting a perspective on what is the value and mission's long term, what are the futures positive outlook and the value of different type of PMO’s initiatives.
- Kevin Ruthen, Head of Software, Applications, and PMO, American Institute of Physics Publishing

Very interesting question. I have to chuckle at this. Most time in running a project in organization most of my people first of all don’t think that you are a project manager. The minute someone thinks they are a project manager their opportunities limit to a defined on undefined role in their mindset. Rather I would say you are a consultant. Why would I pick a word consultant not anything else? The reason why I use consultant I am trying to help my partner, my stakeholder, no matter who it is It could be my testing team, my business partner, it could be my leadership, or somebody else. I am establishing myself as a consultant to insure I understand their objectives. The minute you establish yourself in that role the conversation changes from all this politician, psychiatrists, philosopher, lawyer, friend. All this to a true partner where now I trust Krishna, knock at his door and talk to him.
-    Krishna Mullangi, Sr. Director – Head of PMO, Technology Governance, Western Union

Continue reading the full version of this article. (NOTE: You may need to login to LinkedIn to read. If you are not already a member, please join our PMINJ LinkedIn group.)

For previous article in this series see March issue.

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or want to share your own success stories, then contact Igor at .

To learn more about Igor check out his LinkedIn Profile.

6 Steps to Achieving a Career Breakout
By Michael Milutis

I read recently that 70% of the workforce is disengaged. This is an appalling and distressing statistic for a variety of reasons. Besides the lost productivity to our society at large, there are apparently millions of people who are professionally unhappy and not living up to their full potential.

If you are reading this, and are one of the 70%, here is a quick six-step program to get yourself back on track, aligned with your potential, and flourishing again in your career. If you are one of the lucky 30%, these six-steps will give your career strategy a tune-up or possibly validate what you are already doing day-to-day.

Step 1: Know Thyself

Sounds simple, but most people I meet don’t really spend too much time living the “self-examined life”, and this hurts them in their careers.

Let’s be honest: most of us “fall into” our jobs, and are driven by financial need and what is dictated to us daily by our employers and the market. Nevertheless, no matter how busy we are, all of us should be able to pause and re-calibrate from time to time to make sure that our gifts and personal strengths are aligned with our daily responsibilities. This is the first step, and the most essential step, because if you are not in touch with your strengths, and not aligned professionally with what fulfills you, you will never be able to break out and achieve massive success in life. 

I always encourage anybody who feels stuck in their career to ask themselves a few simple questions and the simplest of all is this: if you had a million dollars per year in income, what projects or tasks would you gravitate towards, and what sorts of responsibilities would you avoid? Invariably, the first response is: “Well, I wouldn’t work”. But if we get passed that, and assume that after a year or so of lying fallow, you wanted to reengage with the world and with society or even with your current job, how would you go about that? This should give you an indication of your natural career path. You can then start envisioning yourself on this path.

I would also strongly encourage folks reading this to explore many of the various personality tests available at no cost. These tests are very helpful at identifying your psychological archetype, and with a knowledge of that, you will have a broader view of all the professional roles that you are best suited for. Another way of saying this is that knowledge of your archetype helps you understand your life’s purpose, and that if you align your unique life purpose with your career, you cannot fail to achieve success.

Step 2: Define Your Vision and Your Goals

When a man does not know what harbor he is sailing for, no wind is the right wind. If you are lucky enough to have achieved knowledge of your archetype, you will still be drifting aimlessly unless you define a vision or a goal. Why do people fail at this? Most don’t know who they are (Step #1), but those who do tend to be afraid of locking into a vision, and setting sail for it (for fear that they will have to shift course once they acquire new information or their circumstances change). Consequently, they stay in reactive mode forever, never seizing their own futures.

You don’t need a 30 year plan, and you don’t have to stick to it with inflexible rigidity to be successful. So start by developing a vision of where you want to be and what you want to be doing in six months or twelve months or twenty-four months. Build your vision out in phases, gradually, and be willing to shift gears once your goals change, or the market changes. Nobody can achieve anything in life without first envisioning it – so you absolutely must define where you want to be, even if a part of you knows that the goal will change before you ever achieve it.

Continue reading for the rest of Michael’s Steps.  (NOTE: You may need to login to LinkedIn to read. If you are not already a member, please join our PMINJ LinkedIn group.)


Michael Milutis is an enterprise strategist at Computer Aid (Allentown, PA) where his experience spans marketing and sales, product development, mobile development, new business development, workforce development, and professional training / coaching. As a coach, he works with IT individuals to help them gain greater clarity over their career paths and better alignment with their authentic selves and the mission of their organizations. You can invite him in to work with your staff and your teams-- and it's always pro bono! Contact him at Michael_milutis@compaid.com or at LinkedIn.

The following have received their certifications since the last newsletter (through 30 April 2017): PMPs

Jacqueline Adelfio Mohit Ahuja Casey Ardis Debra Basile Anna Bayo Shilpa Bhojappa Gitika Bhutani Chitra Bose Michael Campanella Mayra Castellanos Joseph Cece Charles Conover,Ph.D. Alizeta Diallo Jack Dougher Elizabeth Drake-Shanahan James Farrell

Antonio Francis George Giraldo Janelle Gordon Keith Harris Stacy Holk Kingsley Nomamien Igbinoba Jeffrey Jaye Twanda Jones Brielle Kohler Srinivas Korumilli Janet Leppo Tara Lyons George Mai Mousumi Mandal Mark Marsan Urvi Mehta

Vickie Monahan Selva Munoz Wm.Paul Nolan Stephen Palla Gautham Panchangam Dimitri Rassias Raymond Rettino  Roderman Susan Schulze Amit Sepaha Ruchira Shah Osbourne Shaw Sangeetha Siddhantam Kate Stowe Sandrine Turpault Steve Warnek

CAPM Marie Grover Cheryl Hicks Joshua Levy PfMP Bryan Shelby PgMP Venkataraj Prabodh Kumar

PMI-ACP Amy Grandov Charles Kern,III Cynthia O’Dell Suvarna Padalkar Eric Ritchie Nahla Soliman PMI-PBA Susan Burns Wendy Kambestad PMI-RMP None PMI-SP Meraj Hassan Zia

Submissions:

• Where to Send: Email the newsletter editor for newsletter related items, to submit articles and to provide feedback. All members are invited to submit articles, meeting reviews, or other items of interest for publication.
• How to Send Articles: Submit articles as word documents or plain ASCII text attachments via email.
• How to Send Graphic files:  Submit all graphics files as high-resolution (1MB+) JPEG or GIF file attachments via email.  

Publication Information:

Schedule:

• Newsletters are published every other month: Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov
• Articles due to the Editor by the 1st of the month.
• Newsletters will be published via email and on the PMINJ website by the 25th of the month.

Advertising:

• for advertising / sponsorship inquiries.