Rohit Prabhakar

I build agentic revenue systems for Fortune 50 companies

Journey to be a PMP was 10 days long!

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I have been reading various forums for a long time and finally decided to get PMP done few weeks ago. Here is my schedule of action with exact dates on my journey for the project management certification:

August 19 2010:::: Enrolled for the PMStudy class for PMP in Milwaukee, WI, USA

August 20 2010:::: Not yet started the online study material for PMP

August 21 2010:::: Started with the online study material for PMP exam. The only thing I did that day was to memorize the process chart and the formulas provided by PMStudy. (Excellent chart from PMStudy)

August 22, 2010:::: Practiced the process chart only once

August 23, 2010: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM (I had an excellent coach, Mr.Mike Tomaszewski , PMP. Learning was fun!), followed by 3 hrs of study at home (same as taught in class and few practice tests provided in the course)

August 24, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM, followed by 3 hrs of study at home (same as taught in class and few practice tests provided in the course). I am excited to become PMP certified.

August 25, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM

August 26, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 3 PM, followed by 5 hrs of study at home (all processes and few practice tests provided in the course)

August 27, 2010:::: Reread all the important as marked as instructed by Mike in the PMStudy book. Took 2 practice test ( 200 question, provided by PMStudy). Practiced the Process Chart and formulas 2 times. Checked ITTOs for Risk, Procurement and Quality. Watched a movie.

August 28, 2010:::: Took 1 practice test ( 200 question, provided by PMStudy). Practiced the Process Chart and formulas 1 time. Checked ITTOs for Risk, Procurement and Quality once again. Watched a 2 movies (1 in noon and 1 evening!@home). Got to bed at 10 (As advised by Mike and PMStudy, 12 hrs rest and no study before the exam)

August 29, 2010: Reached the Prometric testing center @ 8:45 AM. Test started at 9:30, completed 1st round with 75 marked for review in 2:15. Then took 1:15 to review all 75 and finally the rest of the time to re-review the marked ones that I was super confused about. System had to force time out for me :o) and then the blank screen came

Managing Effectively, Yourself First!

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Leadership is all by example and that is what I have understood and learnt till now. Starting in childhood at the age of 6 or 7 years, the first time my teacher choose me to be a class monitor and then when the college election parties used to win me over for their campaign so that they can win my block and now while leading multiple teams with vivid roles and responsibilities in the corporate world this is what I have learnt again and again. The biggest chapter in leadership I have learnt comes from my association with the spiritual path I follow (http://knowthyselfassoul.org). While doing social work there I have leaded more than 300 people who all are voluntaries. In my personal experience working with voluntary is far tougher as they have no fear of getting FIRED. With my age and the number I lead it was a personal achievement for me. But it was all too easy as I always practiced “LEAD BY EXAMPLE”. Hence I have always started everything from myself!

One of the key items I have seen people discussing most of the times and especially managers is “effective management”. As a manager we all love to talk about this again and again to our teams but we are most of the times aware that we lack it ourselves. I am sure if we know our teams are also aware of the lacunae and hence our teams don’t take this subject seriously. As I cannot fool myself always I have tried to find out ways to self improve but it all starts by identifying what is going wrong, which is the most difficult part. It is extremely hard for anyone to find own mistakes and this has been a challenge for me also. With time and practice I have learnt that if we do a self introspection regularly we can surely find some indicators that point us to the problems. What I have learnt with my personal experience that always indicate me for a time to improve my management efficiency:

  • The number of disagreements with your team are increasing (disagreements may never be close to zero)
  • Delivery is late or it never happened.
  • We delivered but it is of no use (I know you got it :o)
  • You sit late in office
  • Your team is spending too many extra hours
  • Many of the team members are leaving
  • Your team members suddenly started becoming more aggressive in behavior
  • Etc.

I knew just like me you will also say that there are many other factors too. I agree! But we (managers) are also a factor among all others. Just spend time alone and ask yourself for an answer every time this thing happens. In my personal humble experience we managed something in an inefficient manner that we are facing these issues today or will face them tomorrow. I very well remember few years ago while working in India how working late become a fashion and than a habit. The team used to work late; after starting the day late we used to have more than 6-7 tea/smoke brakes, a lunch and a long walk brake followed by some gossips. The day used to start everyday in actual at 3PM (till 4 some meetings here and there :o) and then go to home at 11 PM or late. Most of us will fire this down as more like just a team problem but in actual it was not. It was all supported by the manager as we were accompanied by every time. Finally as this was a habit it never died but the team died and many carried the habit to other groups.

“Effects live far longer than the act” hence I personally believe that as the charity begins at home so does the effective management!

Solar Impulse plane on 24-hour test flight: Wish them the Best!

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I am very excited to see the outcome of this historic test flight of Solar Impulse HB-SIA. First time ever a solar plane will fly straight for 24 hrs. I wish a success to this test and the team as this flight will give a green future for the airline industry. The test is being piloted Andre Borschberg in Switzerland, who will ascend to an altitude of 8,500 mts, while charging its solar batteries (placed on the wings) in preparation for the night flight.
For more details go to http://solarimpulse.com/

Duck can never become an Eagle: Accept the reality if you are a leader!

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If you love to train people and motivate them to a higher level of performance remember one golden rule “Ducks never become Eagles”. I have wasted many hours while trying to motivate some ducks as I always failed doing that.

The first obvious question should be “How to identify a duck?”Ducks always have one or the other excuse. Some of the common duck sentences are:

  • Oh! I can’t do more I am too much busy. (Busy doing what? Playing Farmville/ Poking friends on Facebook!)
  • Oh! I don’t think this is the right time
  • Oh! I am comfortable doing what I am doing
  • Oh! I think I can’t do it
  • Oh! This is not made for me / I am not made for this

Even if a Duck will say yes it will love to swim and expect the team to fly!

The reason why a duck cannot be an Eagle as it has been made that way and it has lived that way. Duck will always like to Swim rather than fly but an Eagle will always fly, NO MATTER WHAT! If you try and use your best resources to make a duck fly like eagle, it will not.

You will not agree to me and say that “the leader should think for the positive and the best for others! Leader takes people from where they are to where they want to go!” I totally agree but my dear friend you must also remember that Leader’s first responsibility is to define REALITY- AS IT IS! And the reality is that duck is a duck and it only wants to swim not fly. It will only fly for a very short term and for a very short PERSONAL gain. A duck does not want to go anywhere except somewhere in the small lake it is in.

As a leader I always first identify who is the right person for the right thing. Once I identify that a person is an Eagle I work on taking that person to the next performance levels. I have practiced this in my profession as well as in the team at the social organization where I have lead since I was 15. Over there I helped in finding and mentoring leaders who performed to impossible limits. It was only there when I was 21, that I figured that I can never make duck an Eagle. Since then I have never tried to work on making a Duck and Eagle as it is against the Laws of Nature as they are two totally different species.

As John Maxwell says “Never try to do this, you will make the Eagles feel frustrated!”

WAS, How to fix: Application already exists in the configuration repository

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Application already exists in the configuration repository

If you are getting this error it means that you have screwed you Websphere Application Server application to a very good extend that now you cannot deploy or un-deploy that particular application.

In order to fix this issue we need to do a manual process of deleting the application

Steps:

  1. Stop the Websphere Application Server
  2. Do a search for your ear file in the file system and delete all the occurrences of the XXX.ear folder
  3. Once we deleted these entire XXX.ear folders, delete all the contents of temp and wstemp folder.
  4. Now go to WAS_INSTALL_DIRprofiles<profileName>defaultconfigcells<cellName>nodes<nodeName>
  5. Edit the file serverindex.xml for an entry for our application within the tag
    <deployedApplications>xxx.ear</deployedApplications>
  6. Restart the Websphere Application Server
  7. Redeploy the application to the Websphere Application Server