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PMI Certification or I GANTT to Get it Done

It's been a while, taking time off for the holidays and vacation but now I'm ready to start back up again. It was not a clear road to get a certification. The first thing I realized about getting PMI certification is that it can put you into a bit of a Catch-22 situation. In order to get clearance to take the test, you have to show you can manage projects but if you want to be a project manager to do that, many require you to have a certification.  Now, I got very lucky. I was able to convert a lot of work I did with BellSouth and later with Equifax into projects. Further, I came along when there was a shortage of qualified PMs and Bank of America was more interested in people with experience than certifications. That I had. After a couple of rough starts, primarily due to layoffs, I was finally able to get in a Program Management Office and get a couple of Design Team Leads (DTLs) with a lot of experience. This allowed me to really work on my project management skills. Also, t
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 First Project Manager Hiring After being laid off at Equifax, they were bringing everything inhouse so all of the IBM team was being let go, I wanted to get a job with the title "Project Manager" as opposed to doing it without the title. However, I seemed to have run into a bit of a Catch-22. In order to be a project manager, I had to have experience as an actual project manager; but to get that experience, you have to be a project manager. I then started looking for "Junior" PM or "Project Coordinator" positions. Problem was they were looking for entry level people, those fresh out of college or just a couple of years under their belt. By this time I had been an Naval officer for 4  years and worked at various other companies, including BellSouth and EDS for 10. I was far from "entry level."  I managed to pick up some contracting work doing IT computer repair, upgrades, and network administration while I look. Have to admit, I got good at repla
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My First Project

 My first real project came when I wasn't a project manager, just a desktop support tech. You see, I worked at BellSouth for several years and was very good at my job. As a reward, I was offered a nice assignment close to where I lived in Vinings, Georgia. It's a suburb north of Atlanta. It's near Cumberland Mall and now is near where the Atlanta Braves currently play. I was in a group with 2 other techs and we did it all, desktop support, network support, etc. If you had an IT issue we solved it. We also had a large secured lab where we'd experiment on machines, make LANS for testing and generally have a lot of fun playing around with IT. It also gave me time to work on my MBA, which BellSouth paid for as part of their training program.  Soon, the other tech left for another assignment and it was just me and my boss, let's call him Steve. We got along well so there were no issues with just the two of us being there. Our overall boss, let's call him Willis, the
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How it All Began

 It was simple really, not even something I thought about. As a matter of fact, someone else pointed it out to me. Prior to becoming a PM, I was what you might call an IT Specialist. I did desktop support, network administration, and even some desktop publishing. When I first got started in the IT world I was a Desktop Publisher at a small engineering firm that worked on a lot of Superfund cleanups. They decided to put in a wide-area-network (WAN). I asked the Network Admin if I could help and he said yes. So, between assignments, I ran cable, created cable, loaded network cards into machines, and helped set up the Novell Network. After completion he said, "Oh, you helped me build it, now you can run it." I was thrilled, I was now the new Network Admin for the Atlanta Office. He then left to wire other offices around the country.  As time went on, I moved on to other companies, including BellSouth, where I did a lot more network and desktop work, and Equifax, where I was the
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Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
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