Project Management World Today Viewpoints
July/August 2005

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Announcing the “Soft Launch” of the International Development Project Management Manual of Practice and Glossary Program. www.IDPMGUIDE.INFO
by Paul Giammalvo

For the past year or so, David Curling, Paul Giammalvo, Robert Youker; R. Max Wideman; Yves Mboda; Teguh Utomo PMP; Ridwan Wibiksana PMP; Serge de Bock, PMP; Yani Suratman; Robinson Akiri; William R. Duncan; Faye Lumsden; Peter Heffron and a group of other practitioners directly or indirectly involved with INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT, have been working to create an "Open Source" (public domain) Project Management Methodology or Manual of Practice and accompanying Glossary of Terms. The initial "project" (to get this launched) was intentionally created to have no formal affiliation with any single professional organization, and the contributed works are subject to "Copyleft" or GNU License Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License, which means what you find on the site and/or contribute is FREE for you or anyone else to use, with minimum restrictions. (As opposed to "Copyright", which is very restrictive)

To fulfill this dream, David Curling, Paul Giammalvo, Rainer Volz and several other key players felt the best approach would be to use a "Wiki", which is a very powerful and flexible open source collaborative software designed to enable workgroups to develop Glossaries http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page and documents normally viewed as books. http://www.wikipedia.org/.

Unfortunately, the recent untimely passing of David (who was sponsoring and hosting the original site) left the core team with no alternative other than to duplicate several months of work in getting a new site set up. Thankfully, Yani Suratman, President Director of PT Mitratata Citragraha www.getpmcertified.com volunteered to fund the open source hosting and licensing of the Wiki for the next two years, and we are pleased to announce that we are officially BACK in business- www.IDPMGUIDE.INFO Under the current configuration, we are using Splitbrain’s “dokuwiki” open source software as the engine, http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki and Wikipedia as the model or templates for both the Glossary and Manual of Practice or Methodology.

The names introduced at the beginning of this message represent the original "founders", and now that we are starting to get rolling, we are inviting the readers of the PMForum to our "Soft Launch" to “test drive” what we have created and to Kick Off this Program. (We call it a program based on the fact that what we created has no defined end...... It is a perpetual "living document", subject to continual change, editing and updating)

As the Wiki software is collaborative, ANYONE can contribute. There is nothing you have to do other than click on www.IDPMGUIDE.INFO, fool around in the playground for 15 minutes or so until you get comfortable with how the Wiki works, and then contribute what you feel you can. No fees, no signing of copyright agreements, no need to even provide your name if you don’t want to. (Although if you want to claim your PDU’s it would be wise for you to identify what it is you contribute)

While you are free to start anyplace you feel you can make a contribution, our recommendation would be to start by populating the GLOSSARY with project management terms AS THEY ARE USED AND UNDERSTOOD in the International Development Project Management Community, keeping in mind that we CANNOT violate other copyrights. (In other words, we cannot simply take definitions from the PMBOK Guide, Max Wideman's Glossary or other copyrighted sources) However, we CAN CITE those sources as references in crafting the definitions we believe appropriate for use by the International Development Project Management Community. (See http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/citation/index.cfm )

Other ways you can contribute would be to look at the Table of Contents of the proposed International Development Project Manual and add, modify or delete that to reflect your views, understanding that whatever you contribute is subject ONLY to peer review and acceptance. No single person or group of people have "veto" power over any contribution. Everyone who contributes has an equal voice in what is or is not adopted.....

For those artistically inclined, we need a logo and for you software guru's, we need to add navigation buttons and other bells and whistles to make the site more user friendly...... In particular, we need a polling feature set up so we can vote on issues where no clear consensus exists.

And for those of you who are PMP's, CCE’s or hold other credentials requiring recertification, be sure to log your time spent on this effort, as it certainly will qualify for PDU's.......... (especially for those of you working on remote sites!!)

Will it work? Who knows....... But judging by the success of Wikipedia, we believe it certainly has a lot of potential......

In closing, you are on the ground floor of something very new, something very interesting and something potentially very important and valuable to the International Development Community. Please take the time to contribute SOMETHING, and let's see where this all goes. I would also like to dedicate this effort to the memory of our good friend, professional colleague and all around great guy- David Curling, PMP, PMI Fellow. May his soul rest in peace.......

Paul D. Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM, PhD Candidate
Senior Technical Advisor, PT Mitratata Citragraha, Jakarta, INDONESIA
Adjunct Professor, Project/Program Management, ESC-Lille, Paris, FRANCE

Paul Giammalvo photo Paul D. Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM, is Director of the ASEAN Project Manager’s Center of Excellence, Inc. (APMX) For over 12 years, he has been provided Project Management training and consulting throughout SE Asia. He is active in the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International, (AACE); Construction Specifications Institute (CSI); Construction Management Association of America, (CMAA) and serves on the Global Project Management Forum Steering Committee. Email Paul G. Giammalvo or visit Paul's Website

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