Resource Library

How do you measure the experience and knowledge of an IT professional? One way is through certifications. Earning any certification is a notable achievement, though not all certifications carry the same perceived worth.

No matter which IT field you're working in, there are several skills that are useful for every IT professional to know. Here, seven experienced IT professionals working in the networking, programming, project management, and security fields, share what they believe a...

Look back at the some of the highest paying IT certifications of 2020.

The question of how a project manager working in a functional or matrix organizational structure gets team members to perform is asked in almost every project management class I have taught.

Implementing business analysis (BA) in organizations needs to be done in a well-planned process. The three steps are contingent on the BA maturity of the organization, its vision for how BA will be used and the degree of executive sponsorship.

In this series, we are looking at six things that can trip up project managers. We’ve covered the hazards of overcommitting, how to provide feedback, the importance of taking responsibility, staying focused, and what leading from the front can actually look like. Finally, we’ll take a look at handling team input.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your PMP certification exam.

You know you need to invest in training, but how do you get the best return on investment (ROI) from your training dollars? To help you make smart training decisions, we've put together this guide, which illustrates some alternative and little-known payment options, the types of discounts and promotions available with training and a suggested list of courses that give you excellent value.

Resource management is always an issue in any project, especially when the stakeholders from whom we need time have operational duties to perform.  If our requirements team was at our disposal 100 percent, always completed activities on target, and worked a full eight hour day without distraction or a loss of productivity, then estimating time would be simple. In this paper, we explore standard approaches to time estimation, the dangers of multi-tasking, and estimation alternatives, which consider work habits and productivity norms.

This paper proposes a unifying model for project plans. A distinction will be made between the outputs of project planning and the project plan itself. The significance of this distinction is to allow projects of all types to be described at a high level, in a common language, regardless of the type of analysis used to develop the plan.

As organizations embark on agile initiatives, business analysts can serve a critical role in ensuring the success of those initiatives. This one-hour webinar will explore why business analysts embody core values and skills to thrive in an agile world. In this one-hour webinar, you will learn: Common myths about agile and business analysis, Agile roles for business analysts, BA skills for succeeding in an agile world, and Maximizing value – at the core of the BA role

The term "life cycle" implies two things: that a process is perpetual and that the sequence of events is obligatory or uni-directional. There is no beginning or end to a life cycle and the sequence of events cannot change. A seed cannot go directly to being a mature plant nor revert back to the blossom stage.

Project procurement activities are often managed by specialists. By this I mean that the procurement department takes over responsibility for purchasing and contract management from the project manager. As a result of this separation of responsibilities, the steps and stages of procurement are often poorly understood by PMs. In this and the next few blog submissions, I will attempt to shed light on procurement activities and relate these activities to the PMI PMBOK.

The tools described in this white paper are essential PM tools. Tools that will best be used, regardless of the project, are the WBS, communication model, and the precedence diagram. The other tools will be needed depending on the project.

Projects are a social endeavor. Traditional project management approaches have shied away from the social advantages a more agile project environment brings. By nature, we are storytelling, pattern seeking and social people. We need colocation to shine truly in a project environment.

A quick 30 minute introduction to Business Analysis for those who are considering the field. This webinar looks at why the BA is essential to the business, what BAs do, and certification paths for Business Analysts. View the slide deck>

A quick 30 minute introduction to Business Analysis for those who are considering the field. This webinar looks at why the BA is essential to the business, what BAs do, and certification paths for Business Analysts. View the slide deck>

Business processes are complicated, and mapping them is not a trivial task. Modelling standards give us the tools to model complex processes, but they do not tell us the best way to approach a model or effectively use the tool. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Rod Fage will guide you through the best way to develop a model, from determining the goal and scope of the process and measuring its effectiveness, to modelling the process in a hierarchical top-down approach, enabling business analyst to continuously validate the model.

Organizations launch projects with the assumption that the new or improved solution will provide worthwhile benefits for stakeholders and a suitable return on investment. By understanding your business requirements you ensure that your teams actually deliver those benefits. Keeping user and functional requirements aligned with the business requirements is a key to successful solution delivery.

The value of IT certifications has grown considerably over the last decade. Examine the evolution of certification trends, see the top-paying certifications and learn how decision-makers are struggling to hire certified employees.

Business analysts have the responsibility to gather, analyze, and validate business and technical requirements for their projects, thus they need structured facilitation skills to manage requirements meetings and workshops. In this one hour webinar you will learn the most important things to remember when planning a facilitated workshop and what types of questions to ask when eliciting requirements.

VMware vSphere: ICM 6.7 is the foundation for most other VMware technologies in the software-defined data center. The recent update from 6.5 brings important new features and enhancements.

Introducing new talent to an established organization can be difficult for many reasons. Seasoned employees may view the incoming new hires as "too green" or as not having the required skills to contribute in a meaningful way. They may worry about having to "waste time" teaching the newbies things that they should already know or get aggravated when the new employees are not familiar with "the way we do things around here." Additionally, it is difficult to know if the right new hires are being put into the right positions for their interests, abilities and talents. After all, a resume and an interview can only tell a hiring manager so much about the person they are bringing on board, and often talented employees are simply being put into a role that is not a good fit.

Every manager wants to get the most out of every employee and maximize team cohesion and efficiency. Making your team members feel as if they are being heard, understood, and acknowledged is critical to any management strategy. Actively listening to team members’ thoughts, ideas, and challenges drives employee engagement and satisfaction, which drives better results. View the slide deck>>

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and PMP-certified project management expert Daniel Stober will look beyond the triple constraint model and focus on the true essence of project success: stakeholder satisfaction. Many project managers (PMs) fall into the familiar habit of managing based on the constraints of time, cost and scope. While all of these are important, managing them effectively doesn't guarantee project success if the PM fails to conduct proper stakeholder management. To manage stakeholders effectively, the PM has to set expectations. Once expectations are set, the PM must influence the perception of project performance with the stakeholder. Tune in as Dan explores methods you can use to accomplish that goal.

Take your VMware vSphere training to the next level—set up your own training lab environment. This paper is broken down into three major sections: the hardware required, the VMware Workstation configuration, and installing vSphere and vCenter (vC).

Good global project managers develop their own competencies, and those of their team members. We can use technology to bridge distance, but also focus on the human aspects of culture, work habits, management style, English as a mandated language, communication, and uncertainty. Perform a self-assessment and assess your team members, then look for on-the-job and other improvement opportunities. A good way to learn more about how to overcome these challenges is to become involved in the international community.

When designing a structured business analyst interview, it’s crucial to have a goal in mind, a clear set of questions planned, and an understanding of how those questions may deviate from the intended goal. An interview has an intended line of questioning; it may also have alternate lines of questioning and unanticipated paths where the interviewee has raised issues or answered questions in a way the business analyst had not considered or planned. In short, an interview is a social process.

So you want to be more agile, but is it possible in a waterfall world? The short answer is yes! Waterfall can be combined with principles of agility. The trick is to recognize how agile practices lead to organizational agility. Any organization can become more agile, but there are trade-offs that need to be considered. In this hour-long webinar, instructor and presenter Brian Egan will help you understand how to make agile work within your organization. In it you will learn: Agile best practices Discover how organizations can be more agile Agile vs. Waterfall: Discuss the pros and cons of each Dispense the myth that agile can only be used for software development Watch this webinar today and learn how and why your organization should become more agile! Recommended Agile Project Management courses: Introduction to Agile Agile Project Management Transitioning from Waterfall to Agile PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Boot Camp

Complexity has always been a part of projects. But today, globalization, new technologies and changing markets have combined to add to the complexity. Today's projects have more stakeholders, more ambiguity and more politics than ever, and project managers need new tools and approaches to succeed. Join Alexander Stanisic and Michelle Moore of Global Knowledge for an information-packed hour on how to manage the complexity of the 21st-century project.

Knowledge Management examines how we acquire, organize, manage, share, and utilize knowledge and information. The Internet gives us an overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis — and the volume of information available is growing rapidly! One of the biggest challenges for individuals and organizations involved in project management is to make the best use of this knowledge and information so they can operate more efficiently, improve decision making, and sustain a competitive advantage.

As mentioned earlier, one of the most useful pieces of guidance that ITIL provides relates to the categorization of suppliers. ITIL describes four categories of suppliers:

Keep your project on time and within budget by controlling the baselines, budget, and schedule. View our comprehensive guide to project management, from project scheduling to cost control, from the experts at Global Knowledge.

Lessons learned is a theory, or conclusion, based on evidence at a given time and describes what went wrong (as well as what went right) throughout the lifecycle of a project. Although it’s completed during the project closeout process, it should occur during the entire project lifecycle to ensure all information is captured and documented. Consequences of not having a project review of lessons learned are the increased likelihood of repeating actions that might have caused:

In my last post I discussed aspects of problem management in the context of a real-life situation regarding the first vehicle I owned. In that scenario, and throughout this series of posts, I’ve demonstrated a real-life situation from a standpoint of the incident and problem management processes that ITIL describes.

Effective requirements collection at the outset of the project is the key step that will ensure that the project manager can deliver what is actually expected. In this respect, the business analyst must become a key ally and advisor to the project manager. Most project managers are not trained business analysts, so taking advantage of the skill set that a business analyst can offer can greatly enhance the possibility of project success.

This webinar focuses on assisting leaders who are determining whether Agile is right for their organization. In one hour, we will take you from the basic concepts of Agile methodology to understanding the process and what your role is as a leader. You will learn the challenges and benefits and how an Agile culture can fuel your teams and provide value for your customers faster.

After several decades on the market, the Project Management Professional® certification continues to be one of the most in-demand certifications worldwide. Learn how you can increase your salary, project success, and organizational value with this recorded webinar.

This power session is an introduction to Managing Stakeholder relations. It offers new ways of managing and dealing with projects, which focus more on communications, understanding stakeholders' needs and managing their expectations, as well as learning about organizational politics and culture, and performing value-add activities. It provides a practical approach to managing issues that matter most for project success - communication, stakeholder expectations, risk, change and quality; so that the scope, schedule and cost end up on target, achieving the desired outcomes for the organization.

We already covered the first three of the twelve advantages of Agile software development. These three advantages focus on team development and refining the process. Advantage #4: Motivated Development Team The positive relationship with a reasonable and satisfied customer is only one of the reasons why many developers prefer to work on Agile projects. The other main contributor is that they tend to value working in self directed teams (which the Agile methods require for success).