First of all, I would like to congratulate all the PMP students who have got their certificates! But please allow me to sprinkle some bad news on your excitement. After taking the PMP, are you really liberated? The answer is “No”! No!
I am a core volunteer.
You may ask, “Who are you? Why should we trust you?” Let me tell you how I got involved with SPOTO through PMP!
To be honest, I became a member of the SPOTO volunteer team because of charisma of the teachers of SPOTO! After I got my PMP certificate, I couldn’t bear to say goodbye to the teachers of the SPOTO.
So of course, I went through the stages of taking the courses on the weekend, “fooling” my husband to come to study PMP at his own expense, and signing up for offline activities as soon as they were available, and finally I was successfully promoted to be a core volunteer of the SPOTO.
I am grateful that I didn’t give up the PMBOK or make it a decoration in my bookshelf. However, I chose to continue learning, thus meeting people from all fields of life. The thirst for knowledge that I saw in the eyes of each of my fellow students was so similar that it inspired me to be more determined to step out of my comfort zone. Using a saying from the teacher of the SPOTO to express my feeling, we are all excellent people who choose to study on weekends.
We all know that PMI owns a range of certifications. But do we have to get all of these certificates without leaving any one of them? Every one has his own answers and thinking. And I dare not jump to conclusions. The PMBOK is a guide to predictive (plan-driven) project management based on a balanced matrix organizational structure, and it teaches us a range of tools and techniques to perform good practice.
The current environment in which we find ourselves is summed up in the phrase “the only thing that remains constant is that change happens all the time”. How to deal with a complex and uncertain project environment is a topic on the minds of all project managers. At the very least, we should accept change rather than resist and stick to the plan (even if the plan is out of date).
Here’s a quote from a conversation I had with the teacher of SPOTO to illustrate my first encounter with Agile.
Me: Teacher, I want to learn the PBA.
Teacher: I’m sorry, but the group is full for these two sessions.
Me: I’ll take a class. I’m tall and sit on the window sill. I don’t mind!
Teacher: There’s a lot of agility in PBA, so go and learn agility first.
My actual idea in the bottom of my heart was “I want to learn PBA. But I do not work in the field of software. What’s the necessity of learning ACP? Besides, I can’t learn it!” After a battle of the minds about 1 minute, I said, “OK, I’ll sign up!”
Looking back on this conversation now, I am grateful to the teacher for exposing me to Agile. I have learned a lot from the two ACP sessions. (Don’t think too much about it. The first session was only for study and not for exams)!
In particular, I have compiled the following two tips for your reference.
Firstly, not only people in the software industry are suitable for learning the Agile. Take me as an example. I am a software novice person completely who can’t write a single line of code, but I got 4P3M in the ACP exam. And insiders should know that this is still a very good result! Among my classmates, there were HR, training, PMO and of course the software industry, in short, we all did very well from all walks of life.
Secondly, the biggest help I got from Agile was that it taught me to think in a certain way. I used to be completely plan-driven. Take fitness for example. I had to plan my workouts and recipes for the next three months or even six months before I could start my first day of exercise. In fact, it’s true that plans can’t keep up with change. Once again, as the valuable words from the teacher of SPOTO goes, “If you think of it, do it! You don’t know if it’s going to work until you do it! Do it to know where you need to change!” After learning this, I realized that this is the art of iteration! First you finish, then you will be perfect!
Any time we studied after we entered society, it was a spontaneous act. No one will tell you something like “There are some days to go before the entrance exams”. At this stage of our lives, starting a course or passing a certification exam is a big step out of our comfort zone and definitely worthy of our praise!
It is the constant collision of ideas with our teachers and classmates during the learning process that inspires us to keep learning more about ourselves, discovering our shining points and thus finding our way!
To conclude, I would like to quote a golden phrase that the teacher of SPOTO always used to say: “A single spark can start a prairie fire”.
We must believe that our small goals can be achieved by our own continuous efforts, iteration and making things happen!
