Resource Library

The triple constraints model has been one of the main staples for teaching project management for as long as I can remember. The model is generally represented by a triangle with Scope on the horizontal leg, Time on the left leg, Cost or Resources on the right leg an...

No matter what book or manual you use to study for the CCNA examination, you will see various protocols and processes referencing an RFC. And, although frequently referenced, the RFCs are seldom actually included in the documentation. So, the logical question becomes...

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 definition of cloud computing depends largely on whether you are a consumer or producer. The public cloud is geared more for the individual consumer or small company, while the private cloud is geared more for a medium-to-large company. In addition, the private cloud is branching out to incorporate the ability to have some data and applications serviced from the public cloud. This white paper examines the different types of cloud computing and shows what cloud computing can offer you.

The flexibility, reduced cost, and mobility of cloud computing have made the concept a hot topic. Before implementing this method of computing, however, it is important to consider the security of the "cloud." In this white paper, you will learn some of the risks and benefits of cloud computing to be sure it is the right solution for you.

The flexibility, reduced cost, and mobility of cloud computing have made the concept a hot topic. Before implementing this method of computing, however, it is important to consider the security of the "cloud." During this webinar, we will help you understand some of the risks and benefits of cloud computing so you can decide if it is the right solution for you.

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...

I attended a meeting this week with a customer of mine and a potential new vendor. The new vendor was there to pitch his configuration and setup service offerings for a specific ITSM toolset. My customer has already had one bad experience with an ITSM tool configuration vendor who promised one thing and delivered much less. He ended up with a tool that’s minimally used and not configured to match his business needs. He’s looking for a vendor that can understand his business needs and priorities and quickly help him get his tool configured and working in a short time frame. Then the topic of standard changes came up. My customer asked for examples of standard changes. The vendor responded, “Server reboots are an example of standard changes.”

In the fourth of his five-part series, Eric Strause explores the hardware and application benefits inherent in a cloud-based architecture.

In this informative, hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Debbie Dahlin will explore an abundance of important cloud computing security issues. She will help you gain insight into the key cloud security issues of maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of corporate information and applications.

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.

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.

During a recent ITIL foundation class, a student asked an interesting question. She wanted to know: “What is the difference between a project and a service?” To be honest, I haven’t spent much time thinking about this distinction. However, I think that those of us who practice ITIL consulting and training should have good answers to questions such as this. Here’s how I answered this question.

Everyone has been involved in a learning program or project that has not delivered its intended impact. Across organizations, remarkably similar but preventable missteps are made in needs identification, learning strategies, program development and implementation.  Instructor Tom Gram, Senior Director of Professional Services at Global Knowledge, will present six classic mistakes learning professionals make that reduce chances for success along with evidence-based practices to help prevent them. 

Global Knowledge practice director for cloud solutions, Hank Marquis, explains the people, process, and technology aspects of cloud computing.

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:

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.

There is a reason why the Agile methods are becoming mainstream. They can work! Although every Agile practice is not necessarily appropriate for every organization, each practice has delivered real value to many organizations, and some Agile practices can be used by anyone! This four part series explores twelve ways in which the Agile methods are valuable. I’ll bet that you will find more than a few that could be valuable for you!

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).

ITIL describes a service portfolio as a collection of the overall set of services managed by a service provider. A service portfolio describes a service provider’s boundaries and promises across all of the customers and market spaces it serves. I like to think of a service portfolio as describing the past, present, and future collection of services offered by a service provider. The figure below shows a high-level view of a service portfolio.

In a recent post, I gave an overall description of a service portfolio and the key components of a portfolio. Here, I will describe how a cloud services provider might implement an ITIL service portfolio. A cloud services provider will regularly have a set of services under development, a set of service in live operation, and a set of services that are retired.

One of the many useful features of tunneling is to carry non-IP traffic across an IP network, and this is still the case when dealing with IPv6 traffic. This transition mechanism makes use of a configured tunnel to transport IPv6 over a native IPv4 network, which may consist of two sites or more. Unlike the previous transition mechanisms, tunneling is not monolithic; while the basic principles may be similar, the operations are different. The following chart gives a breakdown of the current, major tunneling types in use, particularly in a Cisco environment:

Enterprises, whether they are commercial, non-profit, or government entities, are operational organizations that operate through the execution of hundreds of processes. The quality of these processes affects every aspect of the enterprise and these processes are rarely static. Business Process Analysis (BPA) is the discipline of examining processes so that they may be changed to align with enterprise objectives.

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:

This white paper has three main goals. The first is to generate a better understanding of the cloud in both the business and IT communities. The second is to describe the major components of vCloud and the virtual datacenters they provide. The third is help businesses visualize and understand how vClouds could be beneficial in addressing their specific IT needs.

Cloud forensics involves exploring issues a company and its forensic examiner may face when suffering a breach of company information in the cloud. If they need to collect information from the cloud to determine what happened, to determine what was lost or compromised, for remediation, for civil litigation, or for some other action, what issues will they face? And, how can they collect the data? Although this white paper discusses many legal issues, this is not a legal "how-to" article. The purpose is to provide some insight into cloud forensics.

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.

For a project manager (PM) who has served as a military officer on a battalion or higher staff, the parallels between the military decision-making process (MDMP), the orders production process, and project management doctrine prescribed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) are difficult to ignore. Both the MDMP and the processes outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Fifth Edition (PMBOK® Guide) are iterative in nature, allow for the introduction of changes to the original plan, assign tasks and responsibilities, and involve the concept of managing the scope of the operation or project.

Now that we have looked at the similarities and differences between the first two steps of the military decision-making process (MDMP) and the project management processes from the planning process group that align with them, it’s time to take a look at the third ste...

VMware vCloud Director fashions the provisioning of the software-defined datacenter layer to allow for a full virtual datacenter deployment within a short period of time. A vCloud consists of many layers and can quickly become a complex architecture. Before any deployment, requirements should be defined so that the vCloud can be designed to offer those services needed. It is imperative to understand the many components of vCloud, how each vCloud construct fits, which allocation models are available, and what network options can be chosen.

Organizations are moving strongly toward Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) access, bringing outsourced activities back in-house, and finding ways to make use of the growing amounts of data flowing in from many new sources such as social media. These factors create an increasing shift in required and desired skills showing up in IT departments. Hiring and salary surveys, such as the 2014 IT Skills and Salary Survey from Global Knowledge and Windows IP Pro, TEKsystems' 2014 Annual IT Forecast, Foote Research Group's 2014 IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index, Computerworld's annual Forecast survey, Robert Half Technology Survey, and information from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Futurestep, Mondo, GovLoop, and Dice have presented a developing picture of the IT skills that will be in demand in 2014. Here, in survey order, are the top 10 major skills and why they made the list.

Database Management Systems (DBMS) have been monolithic structures with their own dedicated hardware, storage arrays, and consoles. Amazon Web Services (AWS) realized that while each company can use unique methods of collecting and using data, the actual processes of building the management infrastructure are almost always the same. AWS remedies DBMS problems with its Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers increased agility, developer productivity, pay-as-you-go pricing and overall cost savings. But you might wonder where to start, what pitfalls exist and how can you avoid them? How can you best save time and money? Learn what you need to know and where to start before launching an AWS-hosted service.

AWS has introduced Auto Scaling so that you can take advantage of cloud computing without having to incur the costs of adding more personnel or building your own software. You can use Auto Scaling to scale for high availability, to meet increasing system demand, or to control costs by eliminating unneeded capacity. You can also use Auto Scaling to quickly deploy software for massive systems, using testable, scriptable processes to minimize risk and cost of deployment.

In this video, Practice Leader Craig Brown discusses the new Microsoft Cloud Computing platforms and how to keep your organization's data secure and functioning properly while operating either partially or entirely on the cloud.

In this seminar, discover how OpenStack can simplify your cloud infrastructure management. Experts from Red Hat, the leading contributor to the OpenStack project, will fill you in on how organizations have solved problems and increased business value with open-source cloud technology. They will also give you a peek into the future of Red Hat OpenStack and reveal how Red Hat training and certification can ensure the success of your cloud deployment.

Amazon Web Services: An OverviewThere's a really good chance that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has more than a few products to help you work faster, smarter, and more cost effectively. After all, the depth and breadth of AWS is significant, comprising more than 30 services in dozens of data centers located in nine regions across the globe. They offer computing, storage, networking, deployment, management, and a host of supporting services, such as queues and email services. Getting a clear understanding of what AWS is and how it can help your business can be challenging. Never fear. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and cloud and big data analyst Rich Morrow will help. He'll give an overview of AWS and its many benefits.

Today, every project comes with limited resources and an impossible timeline. You have to prioritize, but how do you determine what's most important? The answer is to do more than just prioritize. You have to fully understand your company's strategic direction and make every action align with that strategy. In this hour-long webinar, project management expert Yvan Bastien will show you how to reach that full understanding and make the kinds of informed decisions that lead to success.

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.

Communication is vital within projects and contributes significantly to project success. PMs and BAs have important—and different—roles. Let's take a look.

Whether you're a Project Manager or a Business Analyst, you can certainly relate to a situation where you've felt like your cohort on a project was from a completely different planet! This panel discussion webinar between our PM expert, Ori Schibi, and our BA expert, Cheryl Lee, will explore some of the misconceptions that each role has and learn how to play nicely with each other in the project world.

Global Knowledge Course Director Samuel Brown introduces the Work Breakdown Structure and why it matters to project management.

After a review of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and its close cousin Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), this white paper addresses three main deployment scenarios: SDN without deploying cloud computing, cloud computing without deploying SDN, and deploying cloud computing in conjunction with SDN. We'll look at use cases, when the approach makes sense, and any applicable limitations.

Samuel Brown, project management instructor and consultant, has taught Global Knowledge courses for more than fifteen years. In this video clip, Samuel discusses Global Knowledge's unique and effective approach to helping students prepare for PMP certification.

Kirsten Lora, Global Knowledge Senior Product Director, discusses the benefits of our IT Project Management course.

With the onset of the Digital Age, IT professionals today are hit with a tsunami of changes! "By 2018, adoption of mobile, social, cloud, analytics will redefine 90% of IT roles" according to IDC 2014 Predictions: CIO Agenda. Large organizations are eliminating silos. Small and medium organizations are outsourcing technology services. Digital natives have entered the workforce. New roles will emerge as new ways of doing business are introduced and as old technology fades away. Today's IT professionals must adapt, and a new set of skills is in order. Join Pranav Shah, Manager of Information Technology and Security at Sony Canada, and Pam Maguire, Business Development Manager, Global Knowledge, for a 60 minute webinar on how to future-proof your IT career in the Digital Age. You will learn about how IT roles are changing, what organizations are looking for, and what you can do now to be ready.

The project manager (PM) and business analyst (BA) have to be key allies in the management of any project. That can be difficult when project work is duplicated because of the overlapping tasks defined by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®) and the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Still, as long as roles are clearly defined and understood, the two can cooperate and collaborate, instead of competing. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and PMP-certified project management expert Daniel Stober will explain how to delineate the roles.

Many people believe that cloud computing requires server (or desktop) virtualization. But does it? We will look at using virtualization without cloud computing, cloud computing without virtualization, and then look at using both together. In each case, we'll look at where each deployment might be most useful, some use cases for it and some limitations.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a cloud definition that has been well-accepted across the IT industry. NIST was mandated to assist government agencies to adopt cloud computing for their IT operations. As part of their mandate, NIST created multiple working groups to define cloud computing, its architecture, and requirements. In this paper we explore the center core of NIST's cloud definition.

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.

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.

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 white paper explores the native AWS storage solutions, enabling you to deliver applications in the cloud in the most efficient, cost-effective, and secure manner. In terms of storage, it's important to understand the characteristics of each AWS storage option so that you can implement one or more AWS storage services to meet your needs. Often, you'll find that utilizing multiple storage options together will give you the best outcomes.

Amazon Redshift opens up enterprise data warehouse (EDW) capabilities to even the smallest of businesses, yet its costs, security, and flexibility also make it appealing to the largest of enterprises. It allows companies to easily and conveniently scale their EDW needs both up and down, and as a managed service, it allows your team to offload all of the "undifferentiated heavy lifting" of building and maintaining an EDW. Its raw storage costs are about one-fifth to one-tenth of traditional in-house EDW, and AWS has taken great care to ensure its performance is still competitive with those in-house solutions. Before deciding to use Amazon Redshift, however, it's important to understand what it is and is not.

Kirsten Lora, our senior product director, discusses how Global Knowledge's Business Transformation Services prepare your employees to support your organizational change.

Discover how the enhanced performance and reliability of Amazon Aurora will help AWS customers reduce performance bottlenecks in their applications. The relatively low cost of Aurora will tempt many customers to migrate workloads to this implementation of RDS.

In many organizations, the Program/Project Management Office (PMO) is viewed as purely a cost center, so it becomes marginalized by additional layers of bureaucracy, oversight and cost. But the essence of the PMO and portfolio management in general is to add value to the organization. So how do organizations reconcile the cost of the PMO versus the value it adds? The short answer is to flip the conversation on its head and talk about the PMO as a revenue driver rather than a cost center. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge PMP-certified senior product manager Daniel Stober will explain how, by focusing on efficiencies gained and reduced waste, you can shift the conversation from the PMO being a necessary evil to the PMO being critical for organizational success.

Young adults unable to find work, employers unable to fill jobs, a recent GAO study that reported substantial declines in telecommunication expertise — there has been a lot of news about the pervasiveness of skills gaps, their causes, the actual impacts and what to do about them. It’s rather confusing, because the term “skills gaps” has been hijacked to politicize an extremely wide range of issues.

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.

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.

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.

In this blog series, we'll get you up to speed on using the key tools listed in the PMBOK® Guide. First up, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Accessing cloud-based resources, whether they be IaaS/PaaS/SaaS-based, is very convenient. With a browser and Internet connection, you are up and running. No driving to your work office, no need to log into the corporate network. Just open up your web browser and go. This convenience, however, comes with a security risk. All of your business work is conducted over an insecure communication network. Unlike your office network, where the network link between you and the data center is under corporate control and is physically secure, the cloud access link is over the Internet.

AWS is an incredibly rich ecosystem of services and tools, some of which have security aspects baked in (like S3 SSE), and others that provide overarching security capabilities (like IAM and VPC) that apply to many services. With regard to data storage, operating system, and applications, security functions largely the same in the cloud or on-premises software. Customers can and should continue to follow best practices that have served them well in their own data centers.

Most project team members report to a functional manager who controls their assignments, performance appraisals, raises, bonuses, etc. Until recently, project managers (PMs) had little input into any of these processes. In this paper, learn how a PM working in a functional or matrix organizational structure can get team members to perform.

In this blog series, we'll get you up to speed on using the key tools listed in the PMBOK® Guide, including Decision Tree Diagrams.

Change managers and project managers come at the same goal of maximizing ROI for their organizations, but from different perspectives and approaches and with different skill sets. While project managers are responsible for achieving specific objectives on time and on budget, the change manager's role is broader. Change managers apply a structured approach to helping individuals, teams and organizations negotiate relentless change. A project manager turns ideas into reality. Increasingly, project managers are required to take on the role of change manager as well. Business today can't afford to carry out tasks without considering the larger picture. Today, integration is unavoidable - and expected. In this hour-long interactive session, we'll discuss the similarities and differences between project management and change management. We'll also identify the occasions when both a project manager and a change manager might be needed.

Microsoft Office 365 has a vast array of features to explore. A rich administration interface, streamlined security, and versatile migration options make this one of the most interesting products when it comes to an SaaS public cloud solution.

PowerVC is a cloud tool based on OpenStack technology used to manage your virtualized environment running on your Power System. It automates rapid provisioning/deprovisioning and provides simple ongoing management of LPARs on Power Systems. Join us for this free, interactive webinar to hear senior power cloud consultants Vess Natchev and Kyle Wurgler from IBM System Lab Services.

Cloud computing is a big force in IT today, and it isn't going away. In fact, cloud adoption is going up geometrically, both for end users (think apps on your phone or tablet) as well as for organizations of all sizes. In fact, many smaller organizations may not have any on-premises infrastructure at all, other than networking infrastructure to get connected to the cloud. With this transformation in IT, it behooves all of us in the industry to understand it and adapt or risk being out of a job, like punch card operators.

The past months have seen the release of both the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA)'s long-awaited A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide) v3 and the Project Management Institute® (PMI®)'s Business Analysis for Practitioners. While both represent interesting developments in the field of business analysis, they also provide lots of information to process. There's no need to go it alone! Join Global Knowledge instructors Cheryl Lee and Adam McClellan for this complimentary, hour- long webinar to learn about the differences between the two guides, how both guides compare to the previous version of the BABOK ® Guide, and where all this might be going.

The four-part Cloud TechTalks series shares practical insights and best practices for using the cloud. With exponential growth and unparalleled demand, there are few areas with greater opportunity than storage in the cloud. Join us for this complimentary, hour-long webinar to hear Susan Schreitmueller, IBM distinguished engineer and senior cloud advisor, share IBM's cloud storage solutions. Along with exploring trends and directions around IBM's roadmap for storage in the cloud, Schreitmueller will review Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer options, as well as software-defined storage and IBM's suite of products.

Your organization and a seller have just agreed to a contract with a total cost of $150,000, an estimated profit of $10,000, buyer/seller sharing of 70/30 and a ceiling price of $170,000. What is the PTA (point of total assumption)? A. $170,000 B. $160,000 C. $164,2...

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.

We often discuss how to manage projects, but we overlook an essential step: proving project value. Proving project value ensures that organizational strategies are aligned with project objectives.

The cloud revolution is truly a revolution - the way we work, learn and even play is very different now than it was just 10 or 15 years and will probably be a lot more different in 10 or 15 years. With this in mind, let's look at 10 ways the cloud will (and to a large degree already has) changed the world.

You are the project manager on a construction project where you are deliberating between renting, leasing or purchasing a large piece of equipment. Equipment pricing: Rent at a cost of $2,500 per day; Lease for a 60 day period at $2,500 per day, with a 10% discount; Purchase at a price of $100,000. By looking at your project schedule, you have estimated that you will use the equipment about 50 to 60 days. Based only on price, which decision would you recommend?

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge course director Brian Egler will examine key new features of Microsoft SQL Server 2016 that demonstrate how it provides automatic end-to-end security, seamless generation of business analytics and elastic integration of data in the cloud.

Learn about the Amazon Web Services platform, products, and services. Gain on-demand access to compute, storage, and database services without upfront costs.

Learn about Cloud Computing with AWS and the benefits AWS provides to hundreds of thousands of customers globally.