ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● CELESTE CLANCY 

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers, for project managers.  It’s a chance for us to get together every couple of weeks and have a conversation about what matters to you as a professional project manager.  We’ll cover subjects such as project management certification, doing the job of project management; and we’ll get inside the brains of some of the leaders in the industry and maybe hear your stories.  I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are our resident experts, who have been in the trenches and stood on the mountaintops.  They are the project managers who mentor other project managers and those working toward that title, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.

Andy and Bill, we have a lot to cover today.  We’ll get to some certification subjects in just a bit.  But let’s start off by talking philosophy.  It’s about the WBS, the work breakdown structure that organizes a team’s work into manageable sections.  There are a couple of different philosophies about this subject when it comes to project management.  Andy, what are those?

ANDY CROWE:  Well, you know, a couple of the approaches that we see out there sort of follow the overall approaches in project management.  It’s either top-down or bottom-up.  And so really a lot of the top-down crowd, which you might consider to be Waterfall, SDLC, sort of a traditional approach, they’re really going to favor the WBS.  They’re going to favor looking at it, decomposing the scope, breaking it down, getting to the work packages.  And we’ll talk more about that and explore that.

The Agile community doesn’t really do this.  So you’re not going to see a WBS chart on the wall of an Agile team.  Agile takes a different approach.  They have a more dynamic approach.  So the goal with the WBS is to get the work documented and really understood upfront.  And Agile believes that maybe it’s not always better to do that.  So we’re going to be talking to the traditional crowd.  We are going to have some things to say to the Agile community next week, I think.  But this week is more for the traditional SDLC crowd.

NICK WALKER:  All right.  Bill, tell us a little bit about your experience in all of this.  Do you have a take on this?

BILL YATES:  Yeah, absolutely.  The work breakdown structure, there are some different names.  Andy, when you hear WBS, are there some other things that you think of?  I’ve heard one, I know Louis likes to refer to it as “work bite sizes.”

ANDY CROWE:  Hah, I like that.

BILL YATES:  There are some other uses for that abbreviation.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, that’s good, that’s good.

BILL YATES:  And they’re making some up there.  There are – it’s very interesting when we talk about the WBS.  One of the common fallacies that I think we’ve all seen is people having confusion between, okay, what’s on the work breakdown structure and what’s on the schedule?

ANDY CROWE:  Right, where does one end and the next one begin, sure, sure, sure.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah.  Or I’ve seen cases or heard conversations with project managers where I think there’s a complete misunderstanding of which is which, what goes where.  And so simplicity, if you think about a work breakdown structure as being a visual graph that helps us see what are the outputs, what are the things that we’re going to produce with this project, then that’s a great way to differentiate that from the schedule.  So simplifying a work breakdown structure focuses on the “what.”  What is it that I’m going to produce?  What are the deliverables?  Andy, I remember when I was studying for the PMP exam, one of the things, an analogy that was helpful was “noun versus verb.”

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  So the nouns are on the WBS.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  This is the outcome of all of our actions in our work.  Whereas the schedule of best practice is to take those nouns, those deliverables that we’ll produce that are on the WBS and then translate those into actions or verbs on the schedule.

ANDY CROWE:  So this is an interesting point you’re bringing up, and it really leads to a lot of confusion with practitioners because you go out and you buy a program called Microsoft Project, or maybe you’re using Primavera, or one of the common project management tools.  And here’s the problem is those don’t really, by default, have any understanding or any concept of the WBS.  They start with a schedule.

So I always thought, you know, Microsoft Project should probably be better named Microsoft Schedule or something like that.  It doesn’t get into some of the bigger aspects of managing scope and managing change orders and managing breaking down the scope and controlling all of that.  Which is a confusing thing.

BILL YATES:  Well, it is.  Yeah, Andy, I mean, think about it.  When you start to define a task, they want to know, you know, the software is asking you, when does it start, and when does it finish?

ANDY CROWE:  Right, right.

BILL YATES:  So right off the bat you’re being asked these questions, while I’m still trying to understand what it is.

ANDY CROWE:  And they’re not asking you, why is this important?  Give me the attributes of this task.  Give me the origins of it.  Who requested it?  Why is it here?  All of those things.  So by the time you get to Microsoft Project, it’s sort of implied that you’ve done a lot of this work.  But a lot of people don’t.

BILL YATES:  Right.

ANDY CROWE:  So it gets them in trouble.  It’s like teaching somebody to write by handing them Microsoft Word and saying, “Now you’re a writer.”

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

ANDY CROWE:  Well, you might be.  But there are other elements to writing that Word will simply facilitate.  So, yeah, it is a tricky problem.  I wish that those applications, I wish that the vendors, and maybe somebody’s listening to this who can translate this into reality at some point.  I wish they would incorporate more aspects of a WBS and more aspects of scope management in general into these applications.  It’ll help practitioners.  It’s an absolutely fundamentally important thing that, if you’re going to build a schedule, you need to have a thorough understanding of the scope.

BILL YATES:  Right.

ANDY CROWE:  Otherwise a schedule’s relatively meaningless at this point.  It’s just a bunch of bars.  And that’s the reason people wonder why everything goes over schedule.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

ANDY CROWE:  Well, it’s because they didn’t have a good understanding to start with.

BILL YATES:  Andy, let me ask you another question related to a practice with a WBS.  One of the things that I think you and I have talked about before is walking into the room of a project team and seeing a work breakdown structure up on the wall, and things that you hope to see on it and things that you hope are not on it.  What have you seen?  Like, for instance, I know there’s a rule that you have regarding what should be included on the WBS.

ANDY CROWE:  Okay.  And so, you know, the WBS should have all the work that’s going to be done on the project.

BILL YATES:  So everything we’re going to create.

ANDY CROWE:  Everything that people are going to be working on.  So one of the first questions I ask when I walk into a room and see a WBS, is there work being done that doesn’t map back to this?  Inevitably the answer comes back, well, yeah, there is some.  And that becomes a problem because then what are you going to do?  You’re going to run over budget.  You’re going to run over schedule.

One of the tricks that’s important, though, when you get into creating a work breakdown structure, is the way it’s organized.  And this is something that I have found to be tremendously helpful.  So if you know of the big consulting firm McKinsey, McKinsey’s a high-end consulting firm.  And they have this concept – and I don’t know that they pioneered it, but they popularized it – called MECE, M-E-C-E.  And MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive, Cumulatively Exhaustive.  What it means is big words for this.  It means that everything that’s going to be done on this project is represented on the WBS once and only once.  There’s no duplicates.  There’s no overlap.  There’s no gaps.  And so that is an art to create, to break down the scope to a level.  So Bill, how low do you go with the WBS?

BILL YATES:  Boy, that’s a great question.  Yeah, yeah.

ANDY CROWE:  How far do you break it down?

BILL YATES:  I’m going to give you the consulting answer.  It depends.

ANDY CROWE:  Okay.

BILL YATES:  It’s interesting, I was looking back at some past projects we’ve done with companies, large organizations, those that have tried to answer that question.  And interestingly, you know, I think what I typically hear is anywhere from three to six levels.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  There was one organization, a large manufacturing organization, that really wanted to stop at three, which I thought was, well, it’s a little bit higher than I would have expected.  But three to six I think is probably typical for the industry.

ANDY CROWE:  So the textbook answer says you know you’ve broken it down far enough, it’s generally one day to two weeks is sort of the heuristic, or the unwritten rule.  It should be the size of a work package.  But really we know that, when you can assign it to somebody – it may be an outside vendor; it may be an internal employee; it may be a group.  But when you can assign it to somebody, and they can take it from there to estimate, you know it’s far enough.

BILL YATES:  Right.  There’s another rule of thumb that I like that I was reminded of in preparing for this.  There’s that 4 percent rule of how do I know when I’m at a work package level, my lowest level?  When have I decomposed enough for this WBS?  That work package should not exceed 4 percent of my overall project.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  So it needs to be smaller within.

ANDY CROWE:  You know, I got a chance to sit down with Liliana Buchtik.  And I think she’s from Montevideo originally.  I’m not sure where she lives now.  She’s in Latin America.  She wrote a great book called “Mastering the WBS in Real World Projects,” or “Secrets to Mastering the WBS in Real World Projects.”  And it is this great book, chockful of practical advice.  She did a fantastic job with it.  Have you run across that?

BILL YATES:  Yeah, well, I’ll confess, you and I both have large bookcases behind our desks.  And when you’re not looking, I go and pluck those books.

ANDY CROWE:  That’s where they’re going.

BILL YATES:  Yup.  So I have done that.  I’ve taken a look at that book, and it is very well written.  It’s easy to understand.  It’s easy to follow.  I like her logical approach to the topic.

ANDY CROWE:  And she’s got some cool graphics in there, too.

BILL YATES:  She does.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, it’s well done.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, it really is.

ANDY CROWE:  We need to get her as a guest in the future.

BILL YATES:  Absolutely.

ANDY CROWE:  We need to have her call in.

BILL YATES:  Yes, we do.

ANDY CROWE:  She’s a really neat person.  She’s got a neat story.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, she does.  She’s got great practical advice in the book.  She talks about – she makes a great case for why people should be using a work breakdown structure.  And I wanted to say an amen.  I’m giving her a high-five on many of those points.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, I’ll admit this is one of those areas that people skip.  And they skip it a lot.  They get to a project, and somebody comes in and says, when can I see a schedule?  And so they immediately open up, and they begin with this task list.  And if you’re going to begin there, you’re going to run into trouble.  You’re going to run – you’re running a tremendous risk of having a project that is going to be over time, over schedule, and over budget.

Now, the problem is there’s a funny principle that originated at Microsoft called the WIMP principle, W-I-M-P.  And it’s Why Isn’t Mark Programming, or Why Isn’t Mary Programming?  Companies sometimes don’t like to see people planning and planning and planning.  They want to see people writing code or laying bricks or doing these other things.  So sometimes the organization’s involved in skipping this and is complicit with that.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  It takes a lot of rigor, a lot of discipline for a mature PM to convince that sponsor or that customer that there is – I need time to plan, and my team needs time to plan, and we’re going to begin with a WBS.

ANDY CROWE:  It’s a great educational opportunity, though, and it’s well worth doing.  I’m just – I’m a big believer in this.  I’m a big believer that it pays dividends downstream.  And you know what, Bill, it doesn’t take that long.

BILL YATES:  Right.  Yeah, it really doesn’t.  You’re right.  And, you know, I wanted to – one of the things that Nick has encouraged us to do with this topic is be practical.  So what I wanted to do, too, was turn the corner a little bit and mention some of the tools.  I know you’ve already mentioned a couple.  Perhaps some frustrations, even, or people using the tool for the wrong purpose.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  Microsoft Project, Primavera, they have WBS capability built into them.  There are several other tools that are out on the marketplace.  Actually, back in October at PMI Global I saw – I spent a little time with one of the vendors for MindView.  It’s a company called MatchWare.  And they have a web-based product and solution for WBS that’s quite impressive.

ANDY CROWE:  I have not used that yet.  I’ve heard from other practitioners that they’ve gotten it right.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah.  I was really impressed with it.  I know we’ve used WBS Chart Pro in some of our examples in the past.  Going back to that book that I stole from your shelf, Andy, there’s a great – there’s one page I’ll count out or point out specifically.  Page 114 has a great comparison chart.  And this one I think she did the research back in 2013, so this is fairly recent.  And MindView is on there, WBS Chart Pro is on there, Visio.  Of course, we can, you know, with Excel or Visio or simple tools we can create a work breakdown structure.  We can create these graphs.

But this has a nice comparison chart.  What I would encourage practitioners to do, take a look at the chart.  Pick a couple of these that you think may line up well for you and give them a try.  There’s probably a free trial.  And you could try it out on your current project or your next project and just see how it goes.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, I used to, before any of these tools really had this capability, I used to use something called ABC Flowchart.  And you could create a WBS from that.  And once you know the mechanics of the WBS, you don’t really need software holding your hand so much.

BILL YATES:  Right, you just need something to organize all of these levels.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

NICK WALKER:  So it sounds like the WBS is something that would apply to most projects.  But is there ever a situation where you really wouldn’t need a work breakdown structure?

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  That’s a great question, Nick.  I would say there are a couple of situations that stand out to me.  One is, if you don’t know the scope upfront, you don’t know where the project’s going to take you, you know that you have to get started in order to start figuring that out, then you can’t.  You can’t do a meaningful WBS at that point.  You might do a few boxes as placeholders and kind of fill it in as you go.

But that really is sort of the Agile approach that we hinted at earlier is Agile will jump in and start solving the problem in increments.  Sometimes you can’t solve the whole problem upfront.  You need – there’s too many branches.  There’s too many questions, too many predictive components.

But another time that I’ve seen people skip it, and do so and go straight to the schedule and do it with integrity, is if you get – say you’re a government contractor.  Say you get a government RFP, and the work has already been broken down by somebody to this deep level of understanding, and they’re telling you what they need, what they want, and how they want it done.  WBS might not be so meaningful on some of those projects.  Now, somebody’s already done sort of the mental heavy lifting for you, and your job is to execute.  In that case I would say you could probably skip it and go straight to the schedule.  And the schedule might even be determined for you on something like that.

NICK WALKER:  And of course you mentioned the Agile approach.  We’ll be talking more about that in future podcasts.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, we don’t want to leave out the Agile crowd there.

NICK WALKER:  No.

ANDY CROWE:  They’re an important part of the community.

NICK WALKER:  Yeah.  Another important part of our community is our special guest today.  And, you know, we always like to have a special guest on our program.  But this time we didn’t have to reach too far to find one.  In fact, we’ve been looking forward to bringing her on the podcast for weeks.  Celeste Clancy is the producer of our “Manage This” podcast.  She’s a CAPM, a Certified Associate in Project Management, and she’s the ball of fire that lights a flame under the rest of us to get this valuable information to us.  So welcome to you, Celeste.  Thanks for being with us.

CELESTE CLANCY:  Thanks so much for having me.  I’m looking forward to being a guest on the show.

NICK WALKER:  All right.  I know that Andy and Bill have some questions they have for you about your experience in getting to where you are right now.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, and Celeste, let me start off by saying congratulations.  You got in there, and you went, and you went after it, and you set a goal, and you conquered it.  So we have people come through our lives and come through our organization who will take their time sometimes, and they’ll take months – and sometimes you occasionally meet people who take years, even – to pursue that kind of goal.  And you, how long did it take you from start to finish, roughly?

CELESTE CLANCY:  I think it took about six weeks from start to finish.  And honestly, I didn’t know that taking my time was an option.  So if that had been presented to me, I might have gone with that approach.  But I didn’t know that it was an option.  So I just went ahead and started reading the book and taking the online courses and sat in a live class and just put my head down and studied until I felt like I knew enough to pass it.

NICK WALKER:  That’s great.  Celeste, we do want to say congratulations to you.

CELESTE CLANCY:  Thank you.

NICK WALKER:  And we know that there’s a little bit more pressure for a student of our materials when that student happens to walk by Andy and Bill every day in the office.

CELESTE CLANCY:  Yeah.  I remember telling my husband – who was kind enough to help me study on some of the topics.  And I said, you know, it’s a lot more pressure when the man who signs your check also wrote the book because, if you don’t pass on the first try, that’s the title to the book, so…

BILL YATES:  There you go.  Exactly.  But you did it.  Well done.  And it is interesting to know, so it took you about six weeks to go through.  And one of the questions that Andy and I are always interested in is what really resonated for you?

ANDY CROWE:  What worked for you?

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  So think about your learning style.  For many people, they have a discovery moment as they’re preparing for an exam like this where they’re like, you know, I thought I was always this type of learner, but this is what really worked best for me for this exam.  So what do you think?

CELESTE CLANCY:  You know, I thought I was a visual learner.  I thought the mind maps that are taught in a live class would be everything that I would need to remember and be able to recall everything.  But for some reason they didn’t click with me like I thought they would.  And so I just went to old-fashioned cramming and decided that, if I wrote it, I would retain it.  And luckily that worked.

BILL YATES:  That’s great.  So to me, Andy, I think of that as kinesthetic is somebody who’s engaging with the material and the content, writing notes, taking practice tests, reviewing and highlighting and that kind of thing.  What were some, like if you think about the different components to the material, what were some that worked best for you, like flashcards, practice tests, textbook, that kind of thing?

CELESTE CLANCY:  I think just reading the book and writing down, highlighting what was really sticking out to me, what I felt like would be important to remember, and then taking the time to write my notes.  That really helped me to engage and help it resonate.

ANDY CROWE:  You know, Celeste, I mentioned last time that I’m primarily an auditory learner.  I just – I remember conversations.  I remember things I hear.  And I was taking a certification one time, and we’ll talk about this at some point in the future, but for the PgMP.  And what worked for me, finally – I didn’t have anything to listen to.  I didn’t have anyone to dialogue with.  I was No. 99 in the world on that exam.  I was one of the first 100 to take it.

And as I took it, what I finally had to do was take the program standard, the program management standard, walk around – I walked up and down the road out near our office and read it to myself so that I could hear it aloud.  Isn’t that crazy?  So it’s funny how, when you’re encountering a big block of material, the different ways you have to figure out what does resonate with you, what does work.

BILL YATES:  That is.  So you were, Andy, you were your own book on tape.

ANDY CROWE:  Hey, I was, and it worked.  When it came time, it actually came back to me.  So it worked.

BILL YATES:  That’s good, yeah.

ANDY CROWE:  That’s the only time I’ve ever had to pull that.

BILL YATES:  That’s funny.

ANDY CROWE:  So, Celeste, did you do any of the auditory stuff?  Did you do any of the CDs?  Did you listen to any of the – and did that stick with you?  Or was it other stuff?

CELESTE CLANCY:  I did listen to the CDs.  I think what resonated most with me is I met with a coworker who taught me her “brain dump,” as they call it.  And that was extremely helpful because I was able to know what she thought was important to learn on the test and what in her brain dump was important for her to learn on the test.  And so it was helpful for me to prepare for that.

ANDY CROWE:  Okay.  Let me ask you one more question.  About how many practice questions or practice tests did you take?  Did you do a bunch?  Do a few?

CELESTE CLANCY:  I did.  And I took the approach where I would retake my practice tests, and I would – so basically in the back of each chapter there’s a quiz.  And I would take the quiz.  I would write down my answer.  And after the class, they would teach that chapter, and I would retake that same quiz.  And if I got the question wrong again, I categorized it as a “double-wrong answer.”  It’s one that I got wrong the first time.  I’ve been taught it again, and it still isn’t clicking with me.  And the day before I took the exam, I studied only my double-wrong answers.

BILL YATES:  Excellent.  Excellent.

ANDY CROWE:  Hmm, good.

BILL YATES:  I wanted to ask a question, as well.  Regarding that brain dump, I’ve seen students use that really for two purposes.  One is the obvious.  Now I’ve got those formulae, maybe there’s some tricky formula that I’m intimidated by, earned value, that kind of thing.  I have those in front of me now during my exam.  And the other is a little more subtle, is to build confidence.

So when I first walk into the testing center, and I show them my ID, and I get situated, for me, from my experience with the three professional certification exams I’ve been through, my anxiety level was high.  And it was almost calming for me to take pen and paper and write out my – do my brain dump, have that 15 minutes.  So my question for you is, was that the case for you?  And then, how else did you manage stress during that exam?

CELESTE CLANCY:  You know, I’m not one to really get nervous or stressed.  And so luckily I didn’t run into that.  But maybe I should have been nervous.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, you’re one of the minority on that, so congrats.

CELESTE CLANCY:  But maybe I should have been nervous as soon as I saw that first question.  I think it was very humbling, and I thought, hmm, I hope this brain dump actually comes in handy.  But I did realize that, you know, the night before I take the exam, when I went to bed, you almost dream about these questions that you’ve been studying because you’ve been spending the past 12 hours, you know, cramming for this exam.

And so I remember dreaming about it and waking up and thinking, okay, well, worst-case scenario, at least I know everything on my brain dump.  So if I go in there and forget everything I’ve learned, I at least know my brain dump.  And that did give me some sort of confidence.

NICK WALKER:  All right, Celeste.  Having gone through this process, obviously you can identify with some of what our listeners are going through.  How has that affected the subject matter or how you approach this entire podcast?

CELESTE CLANCY:  You know, it’s actually been really helpful to understand how to manage a project, and the best ways to manage a project, when I’m managing the podcast, so making sure that things are completed on time, and activities that are continent upon other activities are finalized on time, and managing our different resources between, you know, the vendors that we use and our technician here in the studio and coordinating the schedules.  It’s really been helpful to have that information from the test and having studied that.

NICK WALKER:  Excellent.  A little behind-the-scenes work there.

ANDY CROWE:  And Celeste, we’re proud of you.  I guess at this point you get your own Manage This coffee cup; is that right?

CELESTE CLANCY:  I do, I do.  I’ll send it to myself.

ANDY CROWE:  And I think you’ve got a big box of them.  So, excellent.  Make sure and do that.  Thank you, and thanks for taking the time to be with us.

NICK WALKER:  Just one, though, okay.

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.

NICK WALKER:  Just one.  We always like to talk a lot, obviously, about the certification.  So let’s talk about some of the changes that have taken place in the PMP exam since mid-January.  Andy, what’s the word on the street about these changes?

ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, you know what, the exam changed January 11th.  We saw it coming.  There was a lot of publicity about it.  Maybe a little bit of fear, uncertainty, and doubt; so a little FUD factor working there, scaring people.  The early word is there’s no surprises.  And so, you know, we don’t solicit specifics from people about what they saw on the exam.  We don’t ask them about particular questions, that type of thing.  We do ask them how prepared they were going into it on the back end, how prepared they felt.

And what we’re seeing is people feel very comfortable with this exam change, which is what we expected.  Again, you know, the PMBOK Guide never changed.  And so this was sort of a fine-tuning with that role delineation study.  We beat that to death in an earlier podcast, so we don’t need to go into too much detail.  But that’s exactly what I’m hearing.  How about you, Bill?

BILL YATES:  Yeah, same here.  Again, the feedback that we’re getting is not a big change here.

ANDY CROWE:  Right.

BILL YATES:  So you’re right on the money.

ANDY CROWE:  And so what happens is they take certain questions that may not be performing so well, or that might not be aligned with this role delineation study.  They refresh them with ones that are a little more on point, on target, better worded, and performing the way they want them to perform.  And people are seeing it and saying no.  In fact, I talked with someone who prepared back in November and December, took the exam, and said, “No surprises whatsoever.”  So they felt perfectly prepared, even going into it before the change.

NICK WALKER:  We always like to talk about what you guys are reading.  So Bill, tell us what’s on your nightstand these days.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  There’s a book by Seth Godin that I’m reading right now.  The first one I read by Seth Godin was “Linchpin.”  You know, he wrote “Purple Cow.”  He also wrote “Tribes.”  Those are probably the ones he’s most known for, or well known for.  This book is called “All Marketers Are Liars.”  I thought that was a catchy title, “All Marketers Are Liars.”

The bottom line with the book, or the message behind it, is as an organization we need to figure out what our story is and tell it authentically.  And it’s been a fun read.  If you’ve touched any Seth Godin material before, you know he’s a very clever and creative writer, and so I’m enjoying it.  And again, this is not really – this is not something that’s at the top of the list for a project manager.  You’re not going to learn how to create a WBS by reading this book.  You’re not.  But it’s been a fun read for me.

NICK WALKER:  Great stuff.  All right.  Thanks, Bill.  Hey, Bill, Andy, thanks, as always, for sharing your expertise.  And special thanks to Celeste Clancy for stepping out from behind the scenes to in front of the microphone to share her perspective with us.  That’s it for us here on Manage This.  We hope you’ll tune back in on February 16th for our next podcast.  We’ll be discussing the updated PMI-ACP exam for all you Agile practitioners.

In the meantime you can visit us at Velociteach.com/managethis to subscribe to this podcast, to see a transcript of the show, or to contact us.  And tweet us at @manage_this.  That’s @manage_this.  If you have any questions about project management certifications, or maybe you’d like to be a guest on the show, we’d love to get your perspective, too.  That’s all for this episode.  Talk to you soon.  In the meantime, keep calm and Manage This.