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These are what I feel as the top most reasons for the employee to leave the organization.

1. The top most reason for an employee to leave the organization is because of his/her immediate boss. It is because of the boss, a person decides to stay or leave the company. If the boss is dishonest, biased and demoralize the employee, then he leaves the organization
2. Work that is not getting recognized despite the hardwork and dedication showed by the employee
3. Work environment not being condusive enough and in the event that the employee feels uncomfortable working in such an environment, he may leave the company
4. No proper learning curve where the employee is struck to mundane tasks and feels enough of it
5. Reasons like getting married or spouse relocation
6. Move in the corporate ladder to a high position in the new company can make the employee leave for the reason that he might have to wait for many years to get the same in the current organization
7. Salary comes as one of the last reasons for a person to leave the organization

Does a project manager need to be a tech savvy? In my opinion the answer is yes. The project manager should have the understanding of the technology in terms of design perspective and also should know feasibility aspects of a technology too. He need not be a full time developer nor he needs to remember any syntax or so. All he needs is an thorough understanding of the concepts.  If he is not technically good, he will need to be dependent on his team leader or other team members in which case there is a grave risk that the project manager may get deceived.

Other reasons are:

1. Effort estimation: While  doing effort estimation, the project manager certainly needs technical understanding of the project otherwise he cannot estimate the components that are going to be developed

2. Schedule development: Project manager that is not technically sound will also face difficulties during schedule development as he will not have a fair idea on how many resources can complete the task in how many man days

3. Client meetings: In the client meetings, the project manager will not be able to answer technical questions that the clients may pose

4. Team management: The team management also gets tough simply because the project manager can be digressed or deceived of the original facts about the project by the team members

So I strongly feel that a detailed conceptual understanding is mandatory for Project Managers to do well in their job and compete well with others. If not, he will be only a project coordinator just co-ordinating the activities and passing the information to the team.

To clear the PMP exam, all you need to do is read through and thoroughly understand the PMBOK guide provided by pmi.org. PMBOK categorizes Project management under five process groups and nine knowledge areas. The five processes are described in terms of Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs shortly called as ITTO.

The five basic process groups are:

1. Initiating
2. Planning
3. Executing
4. Monitoring and Controlling
5. Closing

Processes overlap and interact throughout a project or phase. Processes are described in terms of:

• Inputs (documents, plans, designs, etc.)
• Tools and Techniques (mechanisms applied to inputs)
• Outputs (documents, products, etc.)

The nine knowledge areas are:

1. Project Integration Management
2. Project Scope Management
3. Project Time Management
4. Project Cost Management
5. Project Quality Management
6. Project Human Resource Management
7. Project Communications Management
8. Project Risk Management
9. Project Procurement Management

In the exam point of view, it is almost impossible to remember the ITTO just by mugging them up. The best possible way to retain them in memory is to understand and learn the ITTO.  So if you remember the key things that you are sure to score high. In the upcoming topics, I will be covering how to go about preparing for PMP exam.

Pareto chart was designed by Pareto who describes a 80-20 principle. 80% of problems are caused due to 20% of sources. So if we concentrate on this 20% of sources we can always get away with 80% of problems.

Pareto chart can be plotted with the problems in the x-axis and the frequency of occurrence in the y-axis. Let me give an example. Say in your project code review, you find out the following errors: My assumption here is a web based project like Java or .Net technologies. You find out that these are the top four frequently occurred error during the code review. Now let us plot the pareto chart that is found below:

Step 1: Draft the raw data as below

Step 2: Rearrange the raw data by their order of frequency as below. Also, calculate the percentage. For example, tab order not followed percentage is calculated by dividing 25 by cumulative total of frequency column.

Step 3: Calculate the cumulative percentage for all the errors. Example, for memory not freed error, cumulative percentage will be sum of 41.67% and 30%.

Step 4: Draw pareto chart as explained below. Pareto chart can be drawn by using combination chart. To make a combination column-line chart, select a standard clustered column chart in the first step of the Chart Wizard. Press the Finish button to skip through the rest of the Wizard, to generate the bar chart. To create a line chart showing the percentage, create another series and set the data values. If you want to combine the bar (Pareto) chart with a series graphed as a line, just graph both series as bars and then right click on the data series that you want as a line and select “Chart Type” and change it to a line.

Project Management has been one of my passions. I have always loved to manage projects and face challenges. I created a category to keep writing about various topics of Project Management like Quality management, Risk Management, Human Resources Management, Communications Management, Procurement Management Scope Management, Time Management, Cost Management. Check this website for articles on these topics. I had completed my PMP (Project Management Professional) exam on July 2006. Let me do some justice to it by writing on what I know