You would be wondering if this is yet another article about PMI Membership benefits.
This is in fact an article which will not talk about the generic benefits…..read on and you shall find my personal experience detailed in it.
No, I am not going to talk about the discount it offers on the PMP exam fees, nor networking opportunities. I am going to talk about how I used the content available therein.
I have been invited to a University in Ahmedabad, India to conduct a course on “Project Stakeholder Management”. This shall be the first time the University is conducting this course. It was the brain child of the Head of Department of Masters in Construction Management. He is an advocator of PMP and values the importance of Stakeholder Management while managing construction projects.
This being a first-time course, I had no back up of the material nor the course pedagogy. The first two sessions were easy to conduct, they being Introduction to PMP and Stakeholder management with a small case study. But when I sat down to prepare the third session I struggled to find the right content for the session. Though I had planned the theory contents of the 15-session course even before conducting the first session, I felt lost. Teaching a full theory session would be dull for me and extremely boring for the students. I wanted to teach the theory through case studies but was unable to find myself on any track.
While surfing through multiple websites I came across the PMI banner and just then had this happy realisation that I am a PMI member and have access to a whole repertoire of cases, articles, blogs and research papers it offers to the members as an unique privilege. And the PMI MEMBERSHIP came to my rescue. I looked up several cases and read several articles easily accessible to me. It was no surprise that the content is rich and written by stalwarts. I selected the case ‘Changing the face at the Busiest Airport in the world through Project Management’ which deals with the refurbishment of the Heathrow Terminal 1 airport. It was an excellent case and exactly what I was looking for explaining Stakeholder Engagement. And all my perplexity was gone!.
I have subsequently found treasures of good reading material on Culture, Communication, Leadership, Stakeholder relations for Project Management. And now I know exactly where to go to smoothen the creases in my lecture preparation.
Not flaunting McDonald’s tag line…. But still I would say…. “I AM LOVING IT”
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