How Can We Make 2019 Better For You and Me?

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year.

May all your dreams come true this year.

If you are preparing for PMP certification examination, my best wishes for you to become a PMP Credential holder this year.

If you are still considering whether to go for the PMP certification or not, it is time to include obtaining PMP Credential among your New Year resolutions. It is a valuable certification you should add to your profile.

Table of Contents

Bye Bye 2018

It is time to look back and reflect on the year that had just left us.

Bye bye 2018! Thanks for everything you had given me!

2018 might go down as one of the important milestone years for me.

The journey after leaving my full-time job

I left my full-time job with Mumbai Metro Rail Project in 2017 and returned back to Chennai. I had to stay back in Chennai due to family commitments.

I did not find any good project, that fits my profile, to be associated with in Chennai.

I agreed to play a supporting role to a construction company. It kept me busy; however, I kept myself away from the main action and restricted myself to a part-time administrative role.

I started to focus on this blog, which I started around August 2017. Though I had been blogging since 2006, I never took blogging seriously.

I should thank Deepak Kanakaraju, popularly known as Digital Deepak, for inspiring me to take blogging seriously and to work on WordPress. My earlier blogs were all been hosted with Blogger platform. Deepak is a pioneer in Digital Marketing in India. He is a Civil Engineering graduate; and, yes, I taught him some part of Civil Engineering. He returned the favour by teaching blogging secrets through his “100 Days Blogging Course”. If anyone is interested in blogging, I recommend you to check out the 100 days blogging course. It is a wonderful course for beginners.

While my part-time work and the blog kept me going, I was yet to fully utilize my time effectively.

Enter 2018!

I got a call from iTechGurus Education Solutions in January 2018, enquiring whether I would be interested to conduct PMP training classes for them. Perfect! I said yes.

I have been doing PMP training since 2010, but never did it on a regular, consistent basis. It was always on and off.

For the first time, I thought of doing it on a regular basis. The journey began with iTechGurus in February 2018. Since then, I have been conducting PMP preparation training programmes every month at Chennai.

I have trained close to 200 candidates in the year 2018. Most of them liked my training style and approach and gave positive feedback.

Training Programmes Conducted in 2018

I conducted several training programmes in 2018, which are listed below:

Conducted 10 batches of PMP Preparation training for iTechGurus, Chennai.
Conducted 2 batches of PMP Preparation training for JPA Solutions (JPA Solutions had a tie-up with MSME to conduct the training).
One batch of corporate training titled “Project Management for Practical Managers”, a one-day training programme for Vestas Technology R&D Chennai Private Limited. Vestas is a pioneer in wind energy technology. They design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe.

Several candidates, trained by me, have gone on to appear for the PMP exam. Most of them were successful and it was indeed a pride to hear their success stories. Let us hope to hear more success stories in 2019.

Meet-up sessions in Chennai

In addition to the 4-days class room training programme, I felt it is important to meet the candidates regularly to help them in their exam preparation.

We had three meet-up sessions in Chennai during December 2018. Each session had two candidates. The candidates found the session very useful as they could get several doubts clarified in person.

Hope to have more such meet-up sessions in 2019. If you are in Chennai and would like to participate in such meet-up sessions, you are welcome.

WhatsApp Group

Started a WhatsApp group in March 2018 to help the PMP aspirants. It has grown in numbers and is very active. I post questions on a daily basis and encourage discussions. I also try to motivate and sustain the interest of the candidates in this group.

Growth of pmDrill.com

This site is doing reasonably well. We get about 120-page views daily. Thanks for the support so far. I hope to take this site to more readers with your help and support. If you like any of the articles here, please share it to your group/ social media account.

Several candidates found this web site useful, particularly my articles on the process flow are quite popular. If you have not checked them yet, please read them. They are written to help you remember the process flow and the key inputs and outputs of each process. It will help you to retain the important ITTOs without memorizing them.

Another popular article is a compilation of 5500+ Free PMP Exam Questions.

I have plans to write more useful articles here. If you have any suggestions on topics, please post it in the comments below.

Conclusion

2018 had been a great year for me personally. How about you?

I hope 2019 will be even better, for you and me.

What are your plans for 2019? Do you think I can be of any help to achieve those plans? Leave your comments below.

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Manickavel Arumugam

Certified Project Management Professional (PMP)®
Certified Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)®
An enthusiastic project management practitioner and trainer.