PDUs Through Toastmasters

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Toastmasters International has grown to become a world leader in helping people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience and develop strong leadership skills.

 

Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. Their membership is 260,000 strong, and their members improve their speaking and leadership skills by attending one of the 12,500-plus clubs that make up a global network of meeting locations.  Membership in Toastmasters is one of the greatest investments you can make in yourself, and is one of the most cost-effective skill-building tools available anywhere.


Toastmasters for PDUs

Toastmaster chapters provide member PMP's an opportunity to gain PDU's, and thus present another option for Tampa Bay members to earn PDUs.

PDUs for Toastmasters activities can be reported under category C, self-directed learning, in the PMI system. For information on reporting PDUs, including limits for self-directed learning, go to PMI.org and follow these steps:

1. Log onto PMI.org
2. Select myPMI
3. Click on Report PDUs
4. Check out "PDU Category Caps and Rules"
5. For Toastmasters, use Category C - Self-Directed Learning.

Keep in mind that just attending Toastmasters meetings does not necessarily qualify as self-directed learning. You need to participate.

Below are some suggested guidelines for Toastmasters activities:

1. Speech Evaluator - 1 PDU
2. General Evaluator - 1 PDU
3. Toastmaster of the event (The Emcee) - 1 PDU
4. Speaker / Presenter - 1 PDU
5. Contest or Campaign Chairperson - 1 PDU
6. Contest Chief Judge - 1 PDU

PMPs should follow the PMBOK Code of Ethics and will be subject to audit as any other type of PDU claim.

 

Benefits
The benefits are incredible for PMP's taking advantage of the Toastmasters proven hands-on education method, and include the following:

Education – First and foremost - the benefit and value is to yourself and your own personal and professional development. No one is a born leader or a super communicator. As with anything, the effort you put into it is directly proportional to your benefit gained.
Toastmasters practice is at your own pace to fit your individual goals for progress. PMPs along with Toastmasters event participants gain valuable, practical, and useful education with hands-on experience and practice of communication and leadership skills.

PDU’s for PMP’s – Another way to gain PDU’s toward the required 60 PDUs over 3 years to keep your PMP current – Affordably! Essentially Free education that you practice with other Toastmasters as your peers. The cost to the PMP interested in taking advantage of these opportunities is only for the Toastmasters curriculum manuals (approx. $10/manual) and membership dues which are minimal (approx. $30-35 for 6-month membership term). This translates to a very minimal cost per PDU in today's tough economy.

Toastmaster Certifications and Recognitions – Accreditation by an International Organization renowned for churning out great Leaders and Speakers. Toastmasters Certifications add more credentials after your name

Networking opportunities – Multitude of Toastmasters events within several levels of the organizational structure allow PMP's to get involved: Chapter, Area, Division, District, or International Conventions; Speech Contests; Speech-A-Thons; TLI - Toastmasters Learning Institute; Workshops; Speech Craft; TV appearances; Key note speakers; etc... Conversely, the PMI sponsored events allow Toastmasters to be involved in, and network with Project Management practitioners and certified PMP's.

Camaraderie – with other Toastmasters within the club, the area, the division, the district an even internationally. There are over 260,000 Toastmaster members world-wide, with 2,500 chapters in 113 countries and you can attend each club's events as an active Toastmaster member. Camaraderie is similar to the camaraderie you grow to feel with other PMI members and PMPs.

Cross Promotion Synergies – Participating Toastmasters chapters will promotethe Project Management discipline tied well to their leadership skills practice, and conversely the PMI Tampa Bay chapter will promote development of communication and leadership skills offered by Toastmasters - that's a WIN-WIN!!!  A great example of this:  You ARE reading about Toastmasters on a PMI website!

 

Tampa Bay Area Toastmaster Chapters

The following is a list of many Toastmasters chapters in the Tampa Bay area:

Bagel Talk Toastmasters "PROS LIke Us" Toastmasters
Bay Pines Toastmasters Raymond James Toastmasters
Carrollwood Toastmasters SPC Seminole Toastmasters
Ceridian Corporation Toastmasters St Pete Toastmasters
FIS Toastmasters STAR Toastmasters (Raytheon Corp)  
Honeywell Toastmasters Tampa Bay Toastmasters
Jabil Toastmasters Toast of the Bay Toastmasters
"Jose Gaspar" Toastmasters Valpak Corp Toastmasters
JP Morgan Chase "JPMC Highlanders" Verizon Telecom Toastmasters
Price Waterhouse Coopers "PWC Tampa Talks"      Well-Care Toastmasters
Progressive Insurance - "Toast N Progress"  

Click for Toastmaster Chapter details
Gathering Business Requirements - Feb 28
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8 PDU Interactive Seminar                             

Projects with any degree ofcomplexity need a formal process to ensure that all of the requirements are accurately gathered, reviewed, documented and approved.

Projects must meet the needs and expectations of the clients to be successful. These client needs
and expectations are set through the gathering and agreement on the requirements of the final
solution. Gathering requirements usually requires more than asking a few questions and then
building the solution. Projects with any degree ofcomplexity need a formal process to ensure
that all of the requirements are accurately gathered, reviewed, documented and approved.

Prerequisites
•  None

Learning Objectives

At the end of this class, participants should be able to:

•  Understand a project, the Systems Development Life Cycle and the Analysis Phase
•  Align requirements to a project scope, objectives and deliverables
•  Recognize various types of requirements and explain them
•  Determine the business areas that should be understood before eliciting requirements
•  Demonstrate multiple techniques for eliciting business requirements
•  Effectively validate the requirements
•  Document business requirements so that they are understood by the project team and business clients
•  Verify that the Analysis Phase is complete and correct

Who Should Attend
•  Analysts, project managers and team members that gather and document requirements
•  Managers that need to understand the Analysis Phase and the requirements process
•  Clients, customers and all stakeholders that provide requirements

Course Outline
•  Overview
•  Scope definition and scope management
•  Requirements definition
•  Current state analysis
•  Requirements - Elicitation
•  Requirements - Validation
•  Requirements - Specification
•  Requirements - Verification

There are numerous exercises to reinforce the concepts taught in the class.

Instructor:  Ten Step Academy

TenStep, Inc. (www.TenStep.com) is a methodology development, consulting, and training company, that is  international with over 55 offices around the world.

Event Date:Friday, February 28th 
Event Time:9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Location:

DeVry University
Tampa East Campus
6700 Lakeview Center Dr
Suite 150
Tampa

Cost:

$200 PMI-TB Member
$250 Non-PMI-TB Member

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Adopting Agile

Where to Focus First When Adopting Agile

If you are new to agile and want to understand what all the buzz is about, start by separating agile project management techniques from agile software development methods. Why the distinction? We’ve always had to think about how we manage work separately from how we actually perform the work.  To really understand agile, start with the nature of the work.

For example, listen to Alan Shalloway, whose firm provides training and consulting to software development organizations and who has several influential books on the subject of agile techniques.  To describe agile, Alan lists the five key questions that agile attempts to answer:

  1. How do we deliver value quickly to our customers?
  2. How do we discover as early as possible what is needed?
  3. How can we accelerate the learning of the development team?
  4. How can we ensure that the software written will be able to grow and be extended effectively when new requirements are  introduced?
  5. How do we accurately gauge the progress we're making in our project?

Notice that only the last question is related to project management.  The other questions are about requirements analysis and product design. That suggests that organizations who are adopting agile methods should look beyond the typical Scrum techniques (project management) and make sure that developers understand agile analysis, design, and development methods.  As Alan’s questions indicate, this is a highly iterative, discovery oriented methodology.  To make it work, you need to know how to design and build products that can be delivered incrementally.

Classic examples of project management that include pouring a house's concrete foundation before raising the walls makes the point that certain activities must precede other activities.  But these examples also are rooted in linear development methods.  Software might lend itself to incremental delivery, but if you try to deliver a house incrementally, one room at a time, it wouldn't be pretty.  And it probably wouldn't be cheap.

Which brings us back to the real agile success factors: design and development techniques.  If the essence of agile is to rapidly deliver incremental value, then we have to be able to design and deliver the product, never knowing for sure which incremental delivery will be the last.  I have no problem with sprints, daily stand-ups, burn-down charts, etc., but they only make sense in the context of agile development practices.

To get a sense of how differently we need to think about building software, consider the example of a car designed with interchangeable parts.  You've got to see it to believe it. Click here to watch a short video.

Now THAT is new.  So if your organization has an agile interest, focus first on the fundamental development methods.  With those under your belt, Scrum becomes intuitive and the project management pieces fall in place.

Further reading:  Read Alan Shalloway's complete description of agile in Chapter 17 of The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management, 4th Edition or visit Eric Verzuh's Power Blog

Eric Verzuh is President of The Versatile Company, which provides project management training and consulting to thousands of professionals each year. His clients include major government agencies, small and large companies, and nonprofit organizations in such diverse industries as aerospace, health care, information technology, and education. Contact Eric at eric.verzuh@versatilecompany.com.

Article courtesy of the Microsoft Project Users Group (MPUG) Newsletter of June 13, 2012

PDD - Managing Virtual Teams - Oct 12
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8 PDU Interactive Seminar
instructed by
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 When was the last time you had your entire project team in one place, where you could see their faces, reactions, and have full interaction? Whether you’ve got teammates down the hall, in the next building, or spread all around the globe, research shows that running virtual project teams requires different skills than "traditional" in-person projects.

With projects increasingly conducted by virtual teams, savvy project managers must understand how to succeed when face-to-face meetings are becoming few and far between. In this course, we will discuss how to get results from your virtual project teams. We’ll cover how to facilitate trust and open communication, including interpreting and acting upon verbal and non-verbal cues when you can’t see them. Finally, while we can’t help set up your technologies, we can provide some guidance on what to do when technology fails.

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Event Date:Friday, October 12th
Event Time:8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Location:

DeVry University
Tampa Metro Campus
5540 West Executive Drive
Suite 100
Tampa

Cost:

$199 PMI-TB Member
$250 Non-PMI-TB Member

Company discounts available
for 3 or more attendees

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Exploring the Agile Lifecycle - Apr 5
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 Exploring  the
Agile  Lifecycycle

8 PDU Interactive Seminar
Presented by Tom Mochal, CEO of TenStep, who specializes in consulting and training in business methodologies.

For many years, there were two major approaches for structuring Information Technology (IT) development projects - traditional waterfall or iterative development. New Agile approaches are now available. These Agile models have moved from the underground to the mainstream. As more and more people work on Agile projects it has become important to increase the skill level and professionalism of the Agile team.

The purpose of this class is to provide an overview of Agile terminology, concepts and roles. The class will also highlight a common Agile lifecycle model so that students can see how an Agile project could be structured from start to finish. By the end of the class students will see why these Agile processes are exciting and unique. Students will also have enough information to start an Agile initiative in their organization.


Prerequisites

None


Learning Objectives

By the end of this class, attendees should understand:

  • The overall philosophy of Agile
  • The main roles on an Agile project
  • A common Agile lifecycle model
  • The challenges associated with Agile


Who Should Attend

  • Development project managers
  • Development team members
  • Clients and other stakeholders that would like to understand light development concepts

Course Outline

  • A Little History
  • Agile Philosophy
  • Agile Roles
  • Agile Lifecycle
  • Challenges

There are numerous exercises to reinforce the concepts taught in the class.

Class Length

One day (8 PDUs)

Event Date:Friday, April 5th
Event Time:8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Location:

DeVry University
Tampa Metro Campus
5540 West Executive Drive
Suite 100
Tampa

Cost:

$200 PMI-TB Member
$250 Non-PMI-TB Member

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The Practice of Program Management - July 19
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The Practice of
Program
Management

SPEAKER:  TOM MOCHAL, President, Ten Step, Inc. 

8 PDU Interactive Seminar

The days of the monolithic, complex, multi-year project are over. They are just too hard to plan, manage and complete within expectations. The better approach is to break large initiatives into multiple smaller projects. These smaller projects are easier to manage and they each have a much better chance to be successful. Of course, if each project was managed independently, the entire initiative would be at risk of losing focus and getting out-of-control.
Enter the program. A program is an organizational structure that is established to coordinate and guide a large initiative made up of multiple related projects. The program provides an umbrella structure over the entire initiative and has the high-level visibility and continuity to guide all of the underlying projects toward overall success.

COURSE LENGTH 
One day (8 PDUs)

Bio: Tom Mochal
Tom Mochal, PgMP, PMP, PMI-ACP, TSPM is the President of TenStep, Inc. (www.TenStep.com), a methodology development, consulting, and training company.  TenStep is an international company with over 55 offices around the world.

Tom is author of a book on managing people called "Lessons in People Management" (BookSurge 2005) and a companion book on project management called "Lessons in Project Management" (Apress 2003). He is also the author of a number of business methodologies including the TenStep Project Management Process, a complete portfolio management process called PortfolioStep, a project lifecycle methodology called LifecycleStep and a framework for building and running a Project Management Office called PMOStep.
Tom recently won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Project Management Institute for his work spreading knowledge of project management around the world. Tom is a speaker, lecturer, instructor and consultant to companies and organizations around the world.

 

Event Date:Friday, July 19th
Event Time:8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Location:

DeVry University
Tampa Metro Campus
5540 West Executive Drive
Suite 100
Tampa

Cost:

$200 PMI-TB Member
$250 Non-PMI-TB Member

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PDD - Advanced Project Stakeholder Management
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8 PDU Interactive Seminar instructed by Roeder Consulting
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Running a successful project requires a high degree of stakeholder management. Stakeholders are anyone who have an interest in your project or will be affected by its deliverables or output. It is important to understand the values and issues that stakeholders have in order to address them and keep everyone on board for the duration of the project.

Many a well conceived project ends up in the scrap heap because of inadequate expectation setting, or sponsors and key stakeholders that become disinterested or impatient with projects that don't produce deliverables quickly enough. These projects, after creating an initial buzz, appear to enter "a dark twisty tunnel" where the light from the tunnel entrance is no longer seen, the tunnel exit is nowhere in sight, and inadequate milestones exist to indicate forward progress. Avoiding this trap is no trivial matter, as it is more than just defining milestones for your project.

Event Date:Friday, May 11th
Event Time:8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Location:

DeVry University
Tampa Metro Campus
5540 West Executive Drive
Suite 100
Tampa

Cost:$250 PMI-TB Member
$300 Non-PMI-TB Member

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PMP Classes
PMP Course History Page


Welcome to the Professional Development class history page. As students complete various courses endorsed by the chapter, the class photo will be published here. Just right click on image then 'save as' in order to keep personal copies of images

Fall 2010 Prep Class

Spring 2010 Prep Class