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I have found that in order to do the job I have been doing for the past decade or so, I need to get a
professional certificate (a PMP Cert) from the Project Management Institute. In a way this is good, because people used to not understand what I do - and now they kind of do..
And I easily qualified for both the education level and the work experience to take the test. I just completed the 35 hours of class time needed to qualify and I take the test tomorrow.
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Another good thing is that PMI has brought a standard vocabulary to the table in Product / Project Management. The bad thing is that this vocabulary is not consistent with mine (via Citibank, Software Waterfall Development Method or Xerox) - and so I have had to memorize it.
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One would assume no problem, but there is. My brain is chock full of 50 years of crap that I can't get rid of and it gets harder and harder to shoehorn new stuff in there. The 9 knowledge areas of PMP - hummm Communications, Human Resources, Procurement, Risk Management, .... damn I gotta look it up. Information about Lichtenstein - Capital Vaduz, Largest City Schaan, Free Bus System, Run by the Duke of Lichtenstein, 66 sq miles large, last country in Europe to give women the right to vote, Member of the European Free Trade Area (made up of Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein in association with the EU).
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See I don't need my Lichtenstein information anymore, but I can't move it around to make space for the new stuff.
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And, one of my strengths is translating from non-tech to tech and back again for customers and developers. So to all my developer friends... let me lay out the problem this way...
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My brain is like a Mac - there is no defrag command.