What our delegates say

Nasir Khan

Position:
Vice President (Complex Implementation Project Manager)

Company:
JPMorgan Chase Bank

Team:
Team of 12. Split into 2 teams, one team working on complex implementation, one team working on fast tracked projects – for immediate implementation.

Types of projects managed:
Project management of multiple complex implementations (typical annual revenue greater than USD 250K each) of electronic banking treasury solutions and working capital products for corporate or financial institutional clients (using virtual cross-functional teams). Additionally delivered three major internal development/re-engineering projects to increase capability generating significant projected income of USD 1.5 million. One such project involving alliance with a partner bank has resulted in awards for JPMorgan.

Q. Why did you decide to pursue the Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

There were two main reasons for this. The first was to continue earning CPDs (PDUs) to maintain my PMP® certification, completing the Advanced Master’s Certificate was a focused way of doing this. The second reason was that the AMC gives credits against George Washington University’s MSc in Project Management. The AMC contains the most interesting courses, they deal with issues experienced project managers really find challenging.

Q. What part of the ESI classroom experience did you like best?

Most definitely it was the interaction with other attendees from other industries. Finding out how they deal with similar challenges was very useful. Regarding the courses themselves I liked the consistent format of them. The course notes we are given are so thorough, that they will be useful to refer to whenever I have a specific problem, even in future.

Q. How have you applied what you’ve learned at ESI to your day-to-day job?

The main thing I am trying to implement is earned value across my team, but I’ve found some difficulty in doing this in practice. Understanding the theory is one thing but implementing it into my team is providing more challenges. It is on my internal projects list to push earned value through this year.

Q. What is the biggest challenge that you face on your job?

It has to be colleagues who do not understand the value of project management. Working with project managers who haven’t been trained in the methodology of managing projects can be very challenging. They question the need for a project methodology. It is important for project managers to know the difference between just completing tasks and managing the whole project process for repeatable success.

Some people are beginning to see the value formal project training has brought me, and now several team members are being encouraged to get formal project training themselves.

Q. What are the benefits of having an Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

It’s early days at the moment, as I only completed it recently. I think it will prove useful in my career though, as it shows a commitment to both professional development and to project management. This is in addition to the learning I gained from each course.

Q. What are some of the lessons that you have learnt while working on projects?

It’s all about people. Project management seems task oriented, but the main aspect of it is managing people. You must understand people and their motivations to get things done. I found the leadership skills course excellent in this respect, it taught a soft skill in a practical way. It was really helpful.

Q. Would you recommend ESI’s project management programme to others? And why?

Most definitely. I would particularly recommend the Advanced Master’s programme, as the courses you complete as part of this are not your standard courses. They all deal with areas experienced project managers will have faced as a challenge. That’s what makes them so interesting.

Q. Why did you decide to become PMP® certified?

I wanted a benchmark qualification, which would be recognised in the UK and in the US. I decided against the APMP® qualification for this reason – in case I wanted to work for a US firm. I wanted a transferable qualification.

Q. Do you have any further comments you would like to add?

Other than a course on MS Project all my training has been with ESI and it’s really been excellent. The instructors are all excellent without exception. I’d still like to do more ESI courses – I’m particularly interested in the new course on Earned Value Management. Also, now I’ve earned 25% of an MSc in Project Management from the George Washington University, I’m considering using this and hopefully completing the whole MSc.

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David Hartley

Position:
Programme Director and Consultant

Company:
International SI/IT and Telecommunications organisations

Team:
Virtual mix of both on- and offshore.

Types of projects managed:
Major Infrastructure deployments, Security, Application and System developments. The application of common sense.

Q. Why did you decide to pursue the Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

The Advanced Master’s Certificate was a good way of continuing my personal development after I had already become PMP-certified, having initially trained in PRINCE2. Nowadays an increasing number of project managers are PMP® certified as the profession gains both recognition and status. The Advanced Masters Certificate is a recognised qualification – and it’s a way of demonstrating I have experience above and beyond the PMP.

Q. What part of the ESI classroom experience did you like best?

Networking with my peers. This is the main advantage from attending the courses. I get much more out of the courses than just the subject matter alone – if that were the case I would simply read the book. The real value comes from sharing experiences with my peers from other industries; hard learned experience is of a far greater benefit and can reap rapid rewards compared to simple coursework.

Q. How have you applied what you’ve learned at ESI to your day-to-day job?

I’d say I’ve put about 30% of the knowledge into action, the rest is background knowledge. I’d say what I’ve found most useful is visualising programme management to different levels within the various organisations where I have worked. The course ‘Aligning Project Management with Organisational Strategy’ sticks out as a useful course, as it helped me express to other people to focus on this too, especially the ability to exclude ‘executive pet’ projects. The course gave a process to go through to get buy in from the right people and the tools for them to confidently so ‘No’ and ‘Stop’ when projects didn’t, or ceased to be aligned to the overall strategy.

Q. What is the biggest challenge that you face on your job?

Changing long-term working practices to a flexible iterative, intuitive approach. Trying to get people away from saying ‘But this is how we always do things’.

Q. What are the benefits of having an Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

It demonstrates a high degree of learning and understanding of project and programme management as well as its practical application in differing environments. And it demonstrates a willingness to remain up to date. In terms of what I’ve gained, it would be a toolset to deal with programme and business problems. The Advanced Master’s Certificate is better aligned to programme management than any MBA.

Q. What are some of the lessons that you have learnt while working on projects?

Change is not just inevitable, it is constant, so accept it and get on with life. People will always surprise you with both their commitment to change and also their resilience to not accept change.

Part of this has to be stakeholder management both positive and negative stakeholders – making sure they’re happy with what they’re going to get or can’t derail your plans. With each project you must get the stakeholders on board to own their benefits and their realisation, and they can then use their position to convince others to adopt the necessary changes.

Q. Would you recommend ESI’s project management programme to others? And why?

Yes – it gives you a good grounding in project management. I’d recommend doing the PRINCE2 Practitioner, as a foundation or entry level, then with additional experience progress to the PMP® from where you can move into the advanced masters certificate.

Q. Why did you decide to become PMP® certified?

When I was working at Nortel they made PMP® certification the company standard for project managers. Now, though, PMP® certified project managers are becoming more valued by a growing number of major organisations, being the GOLD standard, this is why having an Advanced Master’s Certificate on top of this can differentiate you from the rest.

Q. Do you have any further comments you would like to add?

I’d like to see an alumni of Advanced Certificate students and Master’s Certificate students set up, so we can share experiences, and ask each other for help.

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Julie Holmes

Position:
Project Manager - Change Management and Manufacturing

Company: Royal Bank of Scotland Group

Team: Six direct reports and matrix manage a much larger group of cross-functional stakeholders.

Types of projects managed: Large financial cross-functional projects. I am currently integrating Ulster Bank and First Active to five Royal Bank of Scotland Group applications.

Q. Why did you decide to pursue the Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

I did my first ESI course before the Advanced Master’s Certificate was available. I was already PMP® certified; the first course I did with ESI was Programme Management. I really enjoyed it, I found the instructor of a very high standard and I enjoyed the knowledge sharing, which took place among the group members. Thanks to the good experience on this course, I planned my next move to be ESI’s Master’s Certificate in IT Project management, as I come from a business background and thought improving my knowledge of the specific issues of IT project management would prove useful.

At this time the Advanced Master’s Certificate was created and I judged it to be more suitable to me – the courses were pitched at my level. The Advanced Master’s was more of a stretch. Although I wouldn’t say the courses were difficult – the value comes from meeting the other delegates – learning how they deal with specific issues, and of course the insights from the instructors are invaluable.

Q. What part of the ESI classroom experience did you like best?

Without a doubt it is the ability to meet my peers from other organisations. And the quality of the instructors means I enjoy every course. I’ve been to quite a few courses with other training companies too, but I’ve found ESI’s instructors to be the best in the business. For me, the real advantage comes from how they share their experience to illustrate points. That’s where the real added value comes from.

Q. How have you applied what you’ve learned at ESI to your day-to-day job?

Well, I’ve kept all the notes from the ESI classes I’ve attended – they are useful to refer to on specific points. A large part of my role is working on requirements definition, and the notes from the ‘Requirements Management’ class were useful in approaching this.

I’m now involved in setting up project management master classes within my office. We identified the eight areas of project management that the office was lacking in, and I’ve developed small ‘master classes’ to tackle and improve this. The course content and structure from ESI was very useful in pointing the way in this.

The project management benchmarking questionnaire I picked up on one of ESI’s courses was a useful tool in assessing where my office is now. I will use it again at the end of the year to see how far we’ve come.

Q. What is the biggest challenge that you face on your job?

Stakeholders management. As part of a programme integrating Ulster Bank and First Active to Royal Bank of Scotland Group systems, I am managing the integration of five applications. This involves a diverse group of cross functional stakeholders, who I need to ensure buy into the changes and work with me to deliver changes which impact organisational structure, processes, systems and support and are heavily dependant on effective training and communications.

Q. What are the benefits of having an Advanced Master's Certificate in project management?

Project management is becoming more professional, if you’re a serious project manager you need to have accreditation to demonstrate this. In addition to what I learned when completing the courses, I’ve found my own attitude to training has inspired my team members to take project management more seriously, and pursue formal training themselves. They all now have structured project management development plans.

Q. What are some of the lessons that you have learnt while working on projects?

It is really important to make sure you have captured all the requirements, ensured they are documented to the correct level and that they are traceable.

It is also important to manage the stakeholders and their expectations, as a negative stakeholder can de-rail your project and ultimately, it is your sponsor and stakeholders who judge whether your project has been a success. I’d recommend all project managers to have a stakeholder management plan. It helps ensure all the stakeholders are identified; their positions are fully understood and enable an effective management plan to be put in place.

Q. Would you recommend ESI’s project management programme to others? And why?

I would certainly recommend it. In terms of recommending the Advanced Master’s Certificate, which I completed, you should be an experienced project manager before you embark on this. In the first instance I would recommend the Master’s certificate as an excellent way of getting to PMP® certification.

Q. Why did you decide to become PMP® certified?

I got PMP® certified because it shows you are a professional project manager and it stands out on your CV. Accreditation benchmarks you against others. I’ve seen over my career an increase in project managers being trained and accredited – and I really instil the importance of training into my team members, qualifications themselves are something to aim for and demonstrate you have done the training.

Q. Do you have any further comments you would like to add?

I’ve got an awful lot out of ESI’s courses – I still keep my eye out for any new courses that are introduced that will be relevant for me.

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