On Certification

I'd written this many years ago shortly after getting certified as a project manager. I'm posting it here because I think my line of reasoning applies to other types of certifications and academic credentials in general. And, as you'll read later, academic/institutional credentialing has weighed heavily on my mind lately as I consider education options for my kids.

If you're getting started in project management or looking to take your career to the next level, you may be considering PMP certification. In addition to catapulting your resume to the top of a recruitment manager's pile, it often commands a higher salary and even the envy of non-certified colleagues. The PMP is a desirable thing indeed.

Unfortunately, it's often desired for all the wrong reasons, namely, earning a higher salary and the envy of colleagues. Worse, after countless hours of studying PMI's narrowly defined processes and cramming for an exam, many people begin to look at their real-world projects as academic exercises and start to get a little crazy with things like formal communication, protocol and documentation. Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with wanting to earn more, and I am all for adhering to standards and using best practices. In fact, I'm a fairly active member of PMI and intend to maintain my certification status. However, only a small part of my value as a project manager can be attributed to what I learned while studying for the credential.

Frm my perspective, the two best reasons to take the PMP exam are:

1. You want a new job. If you're looking for work as a project manager, having this credential will definitely  give you an edge over the competition. The process you have to go through just to sit the exam is just arduous enough to scare off enough people to boost your chances of landing the job you want.
   
2. Your company said they'd pay for it. One major deterrent for taking the exam is that it's expensive. I addition to the approximately $500 exam fee, you need to spend a certain amount of time sitting in a classroom, taking online courses, or attending seminars. I spent about $3,000 on the structured learning necessary to sit for the exam. If your company offers to fund your pursuit of the PMP credential, it's wise to take them up on it. It's a good investment for your company too, especially if they have prospective clients who factor professional certifications into their vendor selection process.

If your only goal is to improve you abilities as a project manager, your time is best spent reading up on project management lessons from the real world, and finding ways to work closely with more experienced project managers.

In short, the earning PMP certification will NOT make you a better project manager. It will, however, help you to appear more legit in the eyes of traditional organizations.

10 Reasons You're Not In Charge

Have you ever found yourself oscillating between hating your superiors and wishing you were in charge? Many of the things you can’t stand about your boss are the very skills it takes to be one.

This is an article I had written for a business publication a while back, but I found myself coming to the same conclusions as a member of a roller derby league and as a volunteer for educational organizations.

Have you ever heard yourself saying, "This guy is an IDIOT! How could he be my boss when he doesn't even have half the skill I do? I could do his job better; why aren't I running this department?" Here's why.

1. You don’t play politics
Why does one employee get the same compliment for a mediocre job as another employee for an outstanding one? Maybe the boss knows that this mediocre employee needs to feel appreciated, or not only will his mediocre performance become terrible, he'll also be a general pain and make life unpleasant for other outstanding employees. Seemingly inexplicable management decisions sometimes have reasons you just can't see from your vantage point. When management's priorities don't align with yours, it's dismissed and disdained as "office politics."

2. You refuse to make sacrifices
Juggling the needs and priorities of your staff and the business means making sacrifices. Sometimes one option jumps out at you as being the best one, but sometimes there is no clear best option, and you're stuck shooting down a great idea for one that's only marginally better/cheaper/easier. If you've ever been accused of procrastination, you likely have difficulty making decisions that aren't clear-cut.

3. You pay great attention to detail
Attention to detail is a great attribute if you're a designer, programmer, instructor, analyst, etc. But as someone charged with the overall success of an operation or project, you'll need to keep your head out of the details and keep an eye on the big picture. It's near impossible to do both effectively at the same time.

4. You hate paperwork
Managers spend anywhere from 30 to 85 percent of their day with various forms of paperwork. Status reports, budget reports, project plans, performance reviews... the list is endless. Sounds exciting, no?

5. You refuse to take heat for others' mistakes
If you think it's unfair that your boss occasionally gets credit for your accomplishments, consider that they will just as often be blamed for your mistakes. Be prepared to take responsibility not only for your own screw ups, but for all the screw ups of everyone you supervise.

6. You don't like to "schmooze"
It's all about relationships. As someone who will spend a lot of your time smoothing things over with customers, upper management, and your own staff, it behooves you to be friendly and find some common ground with everyone. That means getting along with, and even better, identifying with, people you don't like. This is a great idea no matter what your position in an organization, but it is especially important for managers.

7. You're a realist
Have you ever seen a leader stand up in front of a group of over-worked, exhausted, disappointed, jaded employees and tell them things were going to turn around, and they'll look back and feel extraordinary pride at all they've accomplished? Did you think to yourself, "What a load of crap"? I'll bet somewhere, deep down, even though you were mildly insulted, you were probably just a wee bit inspired. The two worst things a manager can do in times of low morale are 1) nothing, and 2) perpetuate the situation by painting as bleak a picture as everyone else already has. Unless a project is completely irreparable, someone must be forever the optimist and stubbornly point to a future where everything turns out great, as unrealistic as it may seem at the time. That's the manager's job. Figuring out the details of HOW to get to that sunny future is your job, which you're more likely to do if you have the encouragement and support of your manager.

8. You hate meetings
Whether you currently attend one meeting a month or three a day, you will find yourself attending at least twice as many as a manager. And, you'll have to run many of them, which means that when you're not actually in a meeting, you're probably preparing for one.

9. You don't like public speaking
Most managers have to give presentations regularly, if not formally, then informally in the form of status updates to the rest of the company, or even just running meetings for one's own staff. If the thought of standing up and speaking in front of a room full of people makes you nauseous, you'll want to work on it before vying for that promotion.

10. Neck tie = Noose
Appearances always matter, though in some situations more than others. Companies that have casual dress codes tend to hold managers to stricter standards, even if it's not explicitly stated. As a manager you're more likely to be client-facing at least occasionally, which means the clothes you wear and your overall appearance are for the benefit of others, not just yourself.

On the plus side...

10 Reasons You Didn't Want to Be One Anyway

   
1. You don't play politics
   
2. You refuse to make sacrifices
   
3. You pay great attention to detail
   
4. You hate paperwork
   
5. You refuse to take heat for others' mistakes
   
6. You don't like to "shmooze"
   
7. You're a realist
   
8. You hate meetings
   
9. You don't like public speaking
   
10. Neck tie = Noose

Sour grapes? Not necessarily. Think about it. You likely wear at least some of these attributes as a badge of honor, or at least as an integral part of your personal identity. Would you really be happy in a position where you were forced to change aspects of your personality in order to be successful?

"Successful" and "happy" are not the same thing.

It's a shame that at so many organizations, the only way to move into a higher salary bracket is to be promoted to supervisor or manager. The good news that while rare, there are companies that know that management is just another skill, and not necessarily one that's intrinsically worth more than the skills you have. If you're truly underpaid and under-appreciated, consider making a case for a raise or promotion based on the skills that you do have.

If you can demonstrate that your value to the organization is greater than what it would cost them to keep you happy, it's unlikely you'll be turned down. And if you can't demonstrate that you're worth more to the organization than your current salary, maybe it's time to figure why.

In the meantime, the next time you find yourself frustrated with a boss who seems disconnected, consider the list above and ask yourself if you'd really fare much better in their shoes.

A PSA for budding derby girls: Please Take Care of Your Knees

Everyone has already told you to get good knee pads. I'm telling you again--get good knee pads. If there's one area not to cheap out on when you're first starting roller derby, this is it.

I have awesome knee pads. Not only does it feel like landing on a tiny fluffy cloud when I do knee falls, they look cool too. I highly recommend them.

However,  I still have knee pain. There are two circumstances under which I tend  to fall: 1) I'm attempting a maneuver I haven't mastered yet, like  hockey stops or 360's. 2) We're doing a drill that involves lots of cutting across the track & I collide with someone. I'm not doing  contact, so I fall waaaay less often than most of the other skaters.

So if I don't fall very often, I have great knee pads, and I've only been doing this for 6 months, why the knee pain?

Answer: I am weak.

Like, literally, the muscles and ligaments that support my knee are weak. It's not just impact, it's strain that causes pain.

Your  practices probably include a lot of squats, leg lifts and stretches. If  you're having knee pain, pay close attention to them and try to do them  properly. There are tons of resources for that online, and try to get some direct one-on-one instruction from a veteran skater.

Also, give yourself a knee massage before and after practice, and whenever it feels ouchy. Here's how:


Take  care of yourself. If you do injure your knee beyond just typical  workout pain or weakness pain (you will know the difference) see a  doctor, and follow orders. Following the advice above should minimize  the risk that you'll end up needing drugs or surgery one day.

And  for fuck's sake, don't take anti-inflammatories as a precautionary  measure! Inflammation serves a purpose when you're putting strain on  your muscles and joints. Your body needs to be free to respond to the stress you're putting on it.

The Evolution of Rules

A brief conversation with a skater the other day got me thinking about how much the rules for WFTDA roller derby have changed since the inception of the modern incarnation of the sport, and how much they may or may not change in the future.

So I decided to compare a handful of professional sports for clues about how long it typically takes a sport to mature into a relatively fixed rule set. I looked at the NFL, NHL, and NBA, and here's what I found:

FOOTBALL
http://www.sportsattic2.com/araig/NflRulesHistory.htm
American   Football was first played similar to the way it is today in 1876. From   this page it looks like it enjoyed very infrequent changes until the 1940's, but I'd bet that it just seems that way because we have better   records of changes that have happened more recently. If you look at the   recent past (last 20 years or so) there have been major changes almost  every year.

BASKETBALL
http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html
Basketball's   initial rules were written in the 1940's. With the exception of the  late 50's & early 60's, it too has undergone major updates nearly  every year right up to the present day.

HOCKEY
http://www.tmlfever.com/thegame.html#anchor_80359
This   page lists major changes nearly every year from 1910 to the early  80's.  After that, some of the game parameters have been adjusted every  year  right up to 2004. There have also been changes after 2004 that  aren't  listed here, for example here's a summary of major changes in  2008: http://devilsdaily.com/node/102

So   if history is any guide, we can definitely expect the roller derby rules to continue to evolve for many years to come. The level of   athleticism will continue to rise, there will be turnovers in   leadership, and the fanbase will grow & change. The rules of the game will have to keep up, so start getting comfortable with change!

The Cupcake Experiment: Results

After setting up the Cupcake Experiment I checked in on my 8 subjects 6 hours, 12 hours, and 48 hours later. (I meant to check them every 6 hours but I'm on toddler time & that's the best I could do.)

For a while pretty much everything looked like this:


No holes.

But late Sunday night, the foil wrapper that was in the refrigerator with the dull (a.k.a Flat a.k.a. matte) side toward the cake looked like this:


You can see 4 or 5 holes, both where the goopy bits of cake were and further out where the foil was touching the cakey bits.

The final results:



(Tenuous) Conclusions:

• Refrigeration contributes to the corrosive effects of cupcakes on aluminum foil.

• The shiny side of foil is somewhat resistant to corrosion.

• It is unclear whether cupcake goopiness is a contributing factor in the corrosion of aluminum foil.

.................OR.....................

• I royally screwed up this experiment. People smarter than me say that the first holes I found accidentally were partially because of the metal pan.

I plan to repeat this experiment the next time I make cupcakes. This time, however, I'll make a few changes to incorporate the presence of a metal pan into the equation. Any other variables I should consider?

New Questions:

1. Why is the goopy part of a cupcake goopy (is it the oil/butter thing I mentioned in the last post?) and does that contribute to corrosive properties?
2. My original assumption was that the Teflon-coated pan had nothing to do with the holes because the holes only appeared where it touched cake, but in my experiment without a pan it took much longer for holes to appear. So did the pan have factor into it?
3. Less of a scientific questions and more of a paranoid-mom one: Should the holes in the foil worry me at all? I mean, should I be feeding my kids something that burns holes in foil? Or is this just a harmless chemical reaction that doesn't have anything to do with how foods are actually digested or what damage they may or may not cause to little girls who eat them?

The Cupcake Experiment

For Kayla's second birthday, we had an Eric Carle-themed party featuring, among other things, a Very Very Hungry Caterpillar cake constructed from upside-down cupcakes arranged in a line. The antenna were made of candles, representing my pixie's two glorious years on this earth.

The cupcakes were a big hit, and I decided to make them again a few weeks later. I didn't have time to frost them after baking, so I let them cool in the Teflon-coated baking pan and then just covered the whole thing with aluminum foil and put it in the refrigerator to deal with later.

The next morning I retrieved the cupcakes and uncovered them to frost them. I found tiny holes in the foil.

They were pin-sized and I never would have noticed them if it weren't for the fact that the morning sun happened to be shining right through the window behind the cake pan in a way that lit up the holes brightly enough to catch my eye.

Notice that the holes are only where the foil was touching the cupcakes.


Apparently something in the cupcakes reacted with and corroded the aluminum. But what?

I used a Betty Crocker cake mix. Following is the ingredients list from the box:

Sugar, Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Modified Corn Starch, Propylene Glycol Monoesters of Fatty Acids, Baking Soda, Salt, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Dextrose, Monocalcium Phosphate, Distilled Monoglycerides, Dicalcium Phosphate, Maltodextrin, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Datem, Monoglycerides, Xanthan Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Aluminum Sulfate, Yellow 5&6, Nonfat Milk.

To that I added water and salted butter.

After doing some "research" (if one can call 10 minutes of Googling "holes in aluminum foil" doing research) it seems that salt is the most likely culprit.

I wondered if I could identify any other factors contributing to this phenomenon. The ones I figured I could most easily investigate were:

1. Temperature: Did refrigerating everything slow down or speed up the corrosion? Did it make a difference at all?
2. Foil side: Aluminum foil has a flat side and shiny side.* Any difference? (See footnote for more on flat vs. shiny aluminum foil.)
3. Cake side: The top of a cupcake is always kind of goopy. I believe this is due to butter & oils rising to the top of the mix during baking. The goopy part of a cupcake must have slightly different properties than the cakey parts. Did this contribute to my holey foil?

To test these three factors, I needed 8 different test subjects:

#	Temperature	Foil Side	Cake Side
1	Room	Shiny	Spongy
2	Cold	Shiny	Spongy
3	Room	Flat	Spongy
4	Cold	Flat	Spongy
5	Room	Shiny	Goopy
6	Cold	Shiny	Goopy
7	Room	Flat	Goopy
8	Cold	Flat	Goopy

To do this, I cut the top off of a cupcake and quartered it. Then I wrapped them each in carefully folded foil so that part of the foil would touch the goopy bit and part would touch the cakey bit.


Two went in the fridge...


...and two stayed at room temperature.

I observed them over the next two days & recorded the results.

Now, before I post the results, anyone care to form a hypothesis?


*FOOTNOTE: Until a few days ago I thought that there was a functional difference between the flat (or dull, or matte) side of a sheet of aluminum foil and the shiny (or glossy) side. Turns out, there isn't. According to ancient wisdom and Wikipedia, the reason one they look different is that during the manufacturing process, two sheets are run through rollers together to get them nice and thin. Mineral oil is used to lubricate the rollers, rendering the "outside" shiny. When the sheets are pulled apart, the inside is dull. Some believe that you should wrap hot food with the reflective side inward to retain heat better, and cold food with the reflective side outward to keep things colder, but for all practical purposes it really doesn't matter.