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Certifications are the most common way in IT to prove you have the skills to solve various technical and business challenges. In this article, I'll address a range of skill sets. For each certification listed, I've included what the certification measures, the requirements to obtain it.

Whether you are just getting started in business analysis or want to gain a better understanding of certain aspects of business analysis, we have compiled a list of frequently used terms to help you get started.

My most recent blog addressed whether PMP and CAPM boot camps are worth the time and effort. I concluded that for most exam writers, it really did make sense to buckle down and take advantage of all that a quality boot camp offers.

Most organizations quickly realize that knowledge management must be integrated with incident management in order to improve the quality of service and the efficiency of providing assisted service. What is not as quickly recognized is the value of integrating knowledge management with problem management.

The short answer (and a common one in our industry): it depends. When comparing Cisco IOS with Juniper Junos, the decision to choose one over the other is difficult and often boils down to cost. Of course, there are other factors to consider.

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.

Once an organization has categorized suppliers, one of the benefits that is quickly realized is an understanding of how supplier changes affect the buying organization and vice-versa. Changes are the modification, addition, or removal of something from the environment. The scope and scale of each change can be different. Change management covers everything from regular, low-risk, operational modifications all the way to significant organizational strategic shifts.

Regardless of your vendor preference or your experience on the Juniper JUNOS CLI, assuming you have a point of reference to another vendor, your first thought when experiencing JUNOS is, “I have been here before.” The CLI is familiar, convenient, and polished. The similarities between JUNOS CLI and another CLI such as Cisco’s IOS are not what I want to focus on here however; it is their differences I want to focus on. But first, when you connect to a JUNOS powered device and access Operational Mode (see Brad Wilson’s blog post Introduction to Juniper Junos), it looks very much like the User EXEC Mode in IOS. In fact, there are a lot of JUNOS commands that are very much like the IOS User EXEC Mode commands.

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:

None of us have much time to waste, so what can you do when your environment changes quickly and you need to come up to speed on a device that you have never seen before? You find the quickest way to bring yourself up to speed. Some of you will have experience with other vendors’ equipment, and some of you will not have much experience at all; therefore, we will focus on topics that will get your feet wet the quickest and have you talking Junos in no time.