I recently passed the CAPM exam and became a Certified Associate in Project Management. Basically, the CAPM is a fancy title that means I understand the project management process very well but don’t yet have the prerequisite 4500 hours of PM experience to acquire the PMP accreditation. Many have congratulated me recently (thanks!) and have asked whether I was looking to one day do project management as a profession. Curiously to many, I said, “No, not particularly”.  It’s not that I dislike project management. In fact, I’m a firm believer and proponent of it.  It’s just that project management is only one dimension of where I want to end up and not the destination as a whole. So why do the CAPM if you don’t intend to be a project manager? Read more…

Management, Project Management CAPM

Let me begin by saying that I kind of just lied to you. I promise not to make a habit of it, honest. The truth of the matter is that I am on FriendFeed – I’m just not that active on it. In fact, I simply just feed my Twitter updates into it, and put it on auto-pilot. Yes, I know, it’s an amazing tool, but so are so many other new applications/social-networks/websites/paradigm shifts out there. It’s just that I simply don’t care – and you know what? That’s OK. It’s also OK if you don’t care either. I won’t speak poorly of you, swear.

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Management, Rant Adoption, FriendFeed

A few years back, for what seems like a lifetime ago for me now, I was running a small company. One of our projects at the time was to build an online branded-email application targeting the local fashion industry. Back then, it was a pretty open niche, with no, or very few competitors. We felt there was a sufficient demand from the industry based on all the PR the fashion industry sends out before fashion shows, but we knew that the barrier against  entry into this niche was low. We felt we had a window of opportunity, but we had to act fast. We had big dreams, but unfortunately, also shallow pockets.

We didn’t have the in-house staff to take on such a project and to finish it before the next Fashion Week, where ideally, we’d approach fashion designers and their PR staff with the idea. So we made the decision to outsource overseas. This is the story of how not to make the same mistakes we did. Read more…

Management Outsourcing