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Mba

anyone got one? is it worth having?

Yes...I got mine through Heriot Watt Uni by distance learning. VERY hard work if you have to earn a crust at the same time, but well worth doing. It is one of the better MBAs if it is knowledge you are after (and that is why I did it - I have no problem talking "business" to customers with their heads in the clouds now, which is a very useful skill for a PM).

So to answer your question, it depends what you want an MBA for - but from personal experience I would say yes.
 
Yes...I got mine through Heriot Watt Uni by distance learning. VERY hard work if you have to earn a crust at the same time, but well worth doing. It is one of the better MBAs if it is knowledge you are after (and that is why I did it - I have no problem talking "business" to customers with their heads in the clouds now, which is a very useful skill for a PM).

So to answer your question, it depends what you want an MBA for - but from personal experience I would say yes.

I'm PM too. has it helped you're career (altho being a contractor, we dont have careers!) or rate?
 
I'm PM too. has it helped you're career (altho being a contractor, we dont have careers!) or rate?

Difficult to say really...but it has certainly made me a much better PM. And in the current environment when business skills are at a premium for IT folks, it takes potential customers about a nano-second to tick that box when they scan through my marketing doc (aka my CV).

So I suspect it has. And since I am able to provide non-pm services as well (for example at my last gig I helped the IT director with his 2009/10 strategy), it helps with being retained and with getting gigs with previous customers. It's all about adding more string to your bow...
 
Difficult to say really...but it has certainly made me a much better PM. And in the current environment when business skills are at a premium for IT folks, it takes potential customers about a nano-second to tick that box when they scan through my marketing doc (aka my CV).

So I suspect it has. And since I am able to provide non-pm services as well (for example at my last gig I helped the IT director with his 2009/10 strategy), it helps with being retained and with getting gigs with previous customers. It's all about adding more string to your bow...

i assume you claimed this course as a buiness expense for training?
 
I would like to do one but the cost and time has put me off.

However, Working with a chap who is going to be the administrator of a compliance system to control documents, Corrective action planning, Change Control, Incident and Near Miss reporting for Health and Safety amongst other things. This guy has been a Cobol developer for a s/w house for 14ys working on SOP s/w and took 2 yrs out to do a Business MBA in the mid 90's.

He was made redundant before Xmas and this was the first job he went for.


However he has never heard of:

  • Document Management Systems or the process for authorising documents in a formal environment.
  • Change control procedures
  • Prince or any other project management methodologies
  • Itil
  • Six Sigma or Lean
  • Corrective Action and Preventative Action Planning
  • Did not know why I was identifying documents as Polices, Procedures, forms etc (surely they are all the same he questioned?)
  • Did not know what ISO9001 was for
Ok, you may not need to know all this stuff but I thought it would be covered a Business MBA?

All I can say if he passed – then I should be able to do so to.
 

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