I have found myself talking about taxonomy a lot recently. Taxonomy is a big job in a website project, but it’s something stakeholders may not consider early enough in an implementation project. I refer to taxonomy as a big job not only because it can be a lot of work, but also because it is the foundation of your site search functionality. It’s not the “sexy” part of search. It’s not the AI capability, the typeahead, the autocorrect…it’s the wiring into all of those features. When the wiring in your house is not set up correctly, you’ll start to see issues all over the place that may seem unrelated at first. Let’s discuss how that relates to setting up a solid taxonomy model.

What is Taxonomy?

First, let’s define taxonomy. The dictionary definition, as it relates here, is “a system of classification.” This system of classification is often hierarchical. The classification system we are discussing is for your site content. For pages, documents, and other content to show up in site search and other dynamic components around your site, your business must create a hierarchical tagging system and tag all content appropriately. Your content is also organized in site navigation components according to your taxonomy structure.

One common taxonomy model is categorizing content by industry. Industries can have sub-industries and even sub-sub-industries, following the hierarchical classification model I just mentioned. Organizing by product type, subtype, and so on is also a common model, especially on eCommerce websites.

Why is Taxonomy Important?

Many more components are driven by search technology than most realize. It’s not just the generic search box, search results, and filter components. Search and taxonomy drive popular components across many sites, such as those that suggest related content. A lot of planning goes into creating the logic for these components, but they still won’t work as expected unless the base taxonomy model that drives them is sound. Unexpected behavior in these components is often attributed to development defects when it is actually underlying taxonomy or tagging issues.

Working through this logic when implementing new functionality or refreshing your taxonomy can get very complex. You will decide on the logic for populating related content based on your chosen categories and subcategories and how closely they relate to each other. In addition to related components and search results, taxonomy drives filters and dropdowns. Some of these may be dynamic, and options in subsequent filters can change based on a user’s previous selection. Those relationships and dependencies must also be discussed, mapped out, and documented for the development and testing process.

Taxonomy also has an impact on your website’s SEO and ranking. Search engines prioritize sites that are well organized, and implementing a solid taxonomy will give search engines a clear understanding of the content on your site and how it is organized. Just as labeling and organizing your content properly makes it easier for human visitors to find what they need; it also makes it easier for (friendly) robots to find what they need.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices for implementing taxonomy on your website:

• Taxonomy is a massive dependency that must be completed early in a site implementation project. It drives a lot of complex logic, many estimations will depend on it, and it will be a blocker for implementing many foundational components on a website. You should complete most of the business work on taxonomy during Discovery or prior to the website build kickoff.
• Implementation partners should have a chance to review and clarify some aspects of the taxonomy, and there should be room for at least one more iteration after the partner review.
• Keep it simple! Why?
  • Your taxonomy should be thorough and representative of your business, but it should not be overly complex. Your model should allow for future modifications and scaling as your business grows and changes. It will be tough to change an overly convoluted taxonomy structure.
  • Most of the taxonomies that clients have delivered to us at Perficient have been in Excel. You can organize your tagging structure and show the hierarchical relationships just fine in an Excel document. You don’t need fancy tools.
  • Complicated, multi-level taxonomies = complicated and long URLs.

Implementing Taxonomy in Sitecore

Content Tree & Templates

First and foremost, you should structure your content tree in Sitecore to match your taxonomy model. You can set up page templates to correlate to this model. An example would be creating a template for an industry page and a subindustry page and creating rules to only allow a subindustry page to be inserted underneath an industry page.

Utilizing Attributes in Sitecore Search

Sitecore Search utilizes the concept of attributes. Attributes represent different pieces of meta data in content items. From the Sitecore Search documentation: “Sitecore Search uses attributes in several different ways: to display information about content to visitors, to sort, filter, rank, or recommend content items, and to generate statistics.” You should absolutely use the tags associated with your content items (“entities” in Sitecore Search) as attributes to drive site and content engagement.

Attributes in Sitecore Search can be used as facets and/or filters and can also be used for personalization. As I mentioned earlier, it is common for elements of your taxonomy to be used in filters and dropdowns. These should be planned out and utilized wisely. As for personalization, this feature in Sitecore Search will customize a user’s search results by finding results that are similar based on a personalized attribute. Basically, Sitecore Search will show results based on the users’ past interactions with similar content if personalization is turned on for particular attributes.

Wrap Up

When a client recently asked me what the biggest tasks ahead of them were before a site build, taxonomy was one of my first thoughts. It is such a foundational task from a business and a technical perspective. Every business should commit to putting in the work to establish a solid initial taxonomy model and should also commit to revisiting this taxonomy every few years to make sure it is still relevant.

Perficient provides industry expertise combined with end-to-end digital services. If you need guidance with taxonomy or anything else regarding your website, contact our team.

WordPress, which began as a blogging platform, is now one of the most popular content management systems on the web. Its popularity is largely due to its being free and familiar for most digital marketers and IT professionals. However, as a DXP (Digital Experience Platform) consultant, I believe that WordPress is not the best choice for marketing sites of businesses making close to and over $1 billion in annual revenue. There are several leading DXPs that will catapult these businesses into the new digital age, will increase revenue and conversions from the website, and will significantly increase IT team efficiency. Here’s why:

1. Security Risks

Because WordPress is so popular (and it is open source), it is a huge target for hackers. Developers know WordPress well, so they know how to hack it. The statistics are alarming: WordPress sites are subject to over 95% of hacks on CMSs and face around 90,000 attacks per minute.

WordPress sites, due to the open-source nature of the platform, are also dependent on plug-ins and themes for most of the functionality. Developers write these plug-ins and place them out on the marketplace for general use. This means that a WordPress site pulls in code from many external developers that could contain vulnerabilities. To keep your site as secure as possible, you must keep WordPress and PHP updated as well as each and every plug-in and theme that you add.

In recent studies, Sucuri found that many popular plug-ins were vulnerable to serious risks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). Additionally, many vulnerable sites in their study cited that they were on outdated versions of PHP because some of their plug-ins did not support the latest version. These plug-ins and themes introduce so many dependencies and risks that simply aren’t necessary.

2. Team Efficiency

Honestly, managing one WordPress site sounds exhausting. I have talked to clients who manage as many as 30+. If your business is doing this, you have a serious opportunity to make your team more efficient. Keeping plug-ins and themes updated for all sites is a large task, and it must be done to keep your site as secure as possible. Developers and DevOps Engineers can spend a lot of time proactively preventing and reacting to site attacks. So, yes, WordPress is “free” – but what is the true cost to your organization?

Switching to an enterprise-level DXP can offload so many tasks to free up your IT team to focus on other initiatives. Plug-ins and themes will be in your rearview mirror. Depending on which platform and products you choose, you may not have to manage or pay for hosting anymore. AI-integrated tools can be configured in a “set it and forget it” fashion. Your enterprise products can be integrated with each other to enable marketing to do more without developer involvement. Picture your organization running as a well-oiled machine with your DXP supporting you and helping you accomplish your goals.

3. Digital Leads & Revenue

Hearing someone say “we don’t really make money from our website” makes me want to scream. There is no reason that should be the case in 2023/2024. You are making money from your website. If you think you aren’t, your website strategy isn’t where it needs to be. One of the best quotes I’ve seen around LinkedIn is “Your website is your only salesperson who works 24/7.” Even if you don’t have an eCommerce website and you don’t make direct revenue from your website, it should be driving leads and conversions and bringing in business.

The way you drive those leads and conversions is through direct interactions and touchpoints with your visitors. Specifically, personalized content driven by a robust user base and omnichannel content delivery that gives your users a consistent experience with your brand across all touchpoints. You can accomplish this with an enterprise-grade DXP that offers sophisticated tools to help you get to know your users. Your digital presence is worth an investment beyond free, open-source tooling.

Wrapping Up

We have all faced a tough market over the past few years, so it seems like an easy decision to choose a free CMS over a DXP solution that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. However, there are significant trade-offs that come with using WordPress, and it can be a risky decision for your organization. Switching to an enterprise-grade DXP can result in significant efficiency gains and increased customer loyalty and revenue. With the shift to headless in the CMS market, the technology side is heavier on popular front-end technologies like Next, React, and Vue. This means that you won’t have to go out and find a bunch of developers who know .NET or a specific CMS technology.

Perficient partners with Adobe, Optimizely, Acquia, Sitecore, and Contentful for web solutions. We understand that a site migration can be a significant undertaking. We can help with every step of this process, from platform selection and strategy through launch and beyond. Contact our team to get started with this step in your digital transformation.

It’s no secret: the digital world is moving to composable. Moving from the traditional monolithic CMS model to composable does allow you to pick and choose “best in breed” products, but it can lead to confusion and uncertainty. How do you determine what the ideal mix is? When do you start to migrate to these tools? Here are three steps to establish a composable roadmap in your organization.

Step 1: Evaluate

The first step is to truly understand the state of the digital state in your organization. What tools do you have, what do they cost, and what data points do they output. Just because a tool can accomplish something for your organization doesn’t necessarily mean you should keep it around.

• Take an inventory of your current tools, their cost, what they are currently doing for you, and what data they serve up. Rank them in order of largest to smallest spend so that you can determine potential ROI for consolidation. Ensure that you don’t have multiple tools giving you the same data or functionality. If you do, that is a big potential for savings.
• Determine which tools are mandatory for your organization. Maybe your CMO has mandated that Salesforce will be your source of truth, or your org utilizes a certain healthcare software. If there are tools that definitely aren’t going anywhere, make a note of those.
• Determine the integration capabilities of your tools. Can they export data in a nice format, like CSV or JSON? Do they have well-documented APIs and support open-source standards? If a tool is truly a good neighbor, it’s a good candidate to keep.
• Determine the longevity and supportability of your tools. SaaS products are good candidates to keep because they won’t require frequent and expensive upgrades. More good candidates are tools that have a strong community of developer support and a wide user base. If a tool is based on an older programming language that will soon reach end-of-life or that you will have a hard time supporting or hiring for, it should be on its way out.

Step 2: Assess

Now that you know more about the tools that are available to you, the next step is to assess the largest inefficiencies that a composable strategy could solve. You will need to identify inefficient internal processes and churn. Where do those inefficiencies lie and where are they costing you the most money? It could be managing assets across departments, deployment processes, content creation/publishing lifecycle, etc. These are key metrics in determining which products will yield the largest ROI. More examples:

• Excessive spend on web hosting
• Suffering from poor website performance
• Too many data-tracking tools or integrations
• Lost revenue due to an outdated commerce solution
• Low ROI and/or no data from email marketing campaigns

Step 3: Prioritize

After you have identified which inefficiencies are the most critical to solve, you should compare the level of effort to implement vs. value gained. For example, implementing a new SaaS CMS will be a relatively high effort, but it will also be high value – especially if your biggest needs lie in web hosting and performance. Implementing a CDP will be a medium effort, but it will yield a high value for your organization.

Consider the best time to implement some of these products based on your business priorities. For example, if a rebrand or redesign is an upcoming priority, consider rolling headless CMS modernization into that project.

Going Composable with Sitecore

Sitecore continues to lean into the composable model, adding new products to their stack and enhancing the originals. These composable offerings have proven to solve many of the challenges I laid out above and are worth considering as “good neighbors” to your non-negotiables. Here are some examples of common challenges and the composable Sitecore solutions that can solve them:

These are only some examples. In the age of composable, it’s time to put in the work and lean into what is working and get rid of what isn’t. Some good news – Sitecore will often give customers a deal when purchasing multiple SaaS products simultaneously. Sitecore also announced XM Cloud Plus at DX in Minneapolis. XM Cloud Plus bundles products that make sense to implement together, which can give you a good starting point.

Perficient can help with every step of this process. Our Sitecore team is certified in these products, and we are ready to listen to your unique situation and design a solution that is best for you. Contact our team to get started with the composable roadmap for your organization. Read more about this topic from David San Filippo on CMSWire.

Dear Atlanta Sitecore User Group, 

After such a long time apart, we finally got back together on August 24. We had pizza and wine, we shared stories, we laughed – it was exactly as I hoped it would be. 

ASUG, you are important to me for several reasons. First and foremost is community. We have a sizable, tenured, and accomplished Sitecore community here in the Atlanta area. Our group contains a healthy mix of clients, partners, and Sitecore employees, including several current and former Sitecore MVPs. ASUG, you bring together strong minds who are eager to collaborate and engineer new ideas in a relaxed environment. Can you think of anything better? 

Secondly, you provide opportunities for presentations. These grow the strength of Sitecore MVPs and allow the group to learn about concepts that they may not have heard about otherwise. Speaking at a SUG is a great chance for someone to add to their Sitecore MVP application, so your mere existence provides that for our Atlanta community. At the August SUG, we got to learn about the Component Builder in XM Cloud and get some technical tips and tricks for XM Cloud implementations. These sessions build momentum and excitement about future products and warn us about some “gotchas” from partners before others go through similar exercises. 

Learning about Components in XM Cloud and seeing it in a live demo was awesome. Brandon Bruno created a new headless hero component on the fly based on the Sitecore.com hero. This easy-to-use, drag-and-drop component builder is a truly innovative part of XM Cloud. There were a lot of great questions and discussion. It was difficult not to get too in the weeds; we could have talked about Components for the entire SUG. Having Sitecore employees attend and share insights is one of my favorite parts of ASUG. 

Also at our August meeting, I got the opportunity to present our newly refreshed values and mission statement. Our mission moving forward is “to foster an open, collaborative environment within the local Atlanta community whose chief goal is sharing knowledge of and experience with the Sitecore platform.” This was created based on values such as community, balance, fun, in-person, and partner-agnostic. Basing our group on these values should ensure that our relationship remains solid for a long time. 

ASUG, I am looking forward to this being a long-term relationship. I hope that we can continually get feedback from the community to make our relationship the best it can possibly be. Our next date is coming up in November at the same location, and I can’t wait.

Love,

Emily

Many consider workflow to be a necessary evil. But it is necessary, and I will make my case in this post. I highly recommend working through the requirements for workflow and including it in your initial site build or rebuild. However, not all of us have that luxury – and that’s okay. The great thing about workflow in Sitecore is that at the end of the day, it is just another field that can be modified like the others. This means that you can develop and apply workflow to Sitecore items at any point in your lifecycle via Powershell. 

Here are three reasons that I am a big advocate of implementing workflow. I would love to hear yours in the comments or on LinkedIn.

1. Scalability

Here is a common scenario: when building a website, workflow is deemed unnecessary and pushed to Phase 2 because there are only a few content authors. Other features and bugs continue to take priority over implementing workflow. Now you are a few years down the line and your organization has grown, or you have implemented features that require a new set of content authors to be trained. Suddenly this lack of workflow is a problem. 

An organization may not have any issue allowing all content authors to be administrators early in a Sitecore implementation. In fact, it is often viewed as the more efficient option if their authors are Sitecore savvy. It will save money on the workflow implementation, and the authors will not be limited to performing only certain actions. 

However, this model is not scalable. Businesses experience turnover and growth. It is unlikely that you will have the same people using Sitecore in a year that you do today. Making everyone an administrator is risky, and implementing even the most basic user roles and workflow will enable your organization to adopt Sitecore on a larger scale. 

2. Audit Trail

When you make a change to a page as an administrator, you just make the change and save. When you are using workflow and user roles, you use the “lock and edit” action that checks out and adds a new version of the page. This creates an audit trail of the editing history of that page:

An example of a Sitecore page that has 9 different versions created through workflow.

This history serves several purposes – the first being that it eliminates confusion. I have aided in many investigations when something unexpectedly changed on a page. No one knew who made the change or when it happened. Sitecore will show you which account last updated each item and when, but beyond that you must rely on the logs. Combing through the logs can be extremely time-consuming if you cannot pinpoint the day and time that the activity took place. If you have this editing history as shown above, you have a clear audit trail of what changed and when. 

Secondly, having this history can almost serve an “undo” function. It allows you to revert the page to a previous version if something went wrong with the most recent version. 

3. Ability to run automated publishing jobs

Let’s consider the case of an organization that has a lot of content but a small approval team. To make things easier on the approvers, they may elect to run an automated publishing job 1-2 times per 24 hours to publish all finalized content to the front end. The team would approve content throughout the day, publish what is needed to go live on the site immediately, and the automated job would publish the rest of the approved content on schedule. 

Automated publishing jobs are not possible unless you have workflow in place. The reason these jobs work is because they only publish approved content, not content that is in Draft or Waiting for Approval state. If there is no workflow at all, these jobs would publish all saved changes. This would potentially result in changes that were not ready to be user-facing going live on the front end. 

Applying workflow after implementation

The good news: if you have already implemented a site without workflow, it is simple enough to run a project to implement it and apply it to the items in your solution. You can apply basic workflow, or you can develop a custom workflow tailored to your organization and its needs.  

When the development is done, you can deploy the code to production and plan to run a Powershell script to apply the workflow at a time when it is most convenient for your team. This means that you can time the deployment and the “enabling” separately to ensure that your entire team is prepared. When you are applying workflow via script, you will likely be setting each item to the Approved state initially. The content team will need advance notice to ensure all recent changes are ready for production before the workflow changes are applied, since setting each item to Approved and publishing will push all changes to the front end. 

Summary

Workflow is a worthwhile investment. If it is not already in your solution, I hope it is an upcoming stop on your roadmap. If you are also passionate about workflow or have any other compelling reasons to add to this list, reach out to me and start a dialog on LinkedIn!

All of the buzz in the Sitecore community lately is around the composable DXP and headless offerings. Rightfully so – I believe that this plug-and-play model is much more customer-centric and easier to digest. And while there are many businesses who have already made the switch to composable, others are choosing to stay on the XP platform for a bit longer. It takes time to understand the new SaaS offerings, get internal stakeholders on board, and form an implementation plan. Seeing the onslaught of fresh content about the latest from Sitecore can make the XP users feel like they’ve been left in the dust. So, what’s next? 

Discuss Your Roadmap 

The first thing you should do (and should be doing regularly!) is discuss your short-term and long-term roadmap for Sitecore. How long will you stay on XP? There is no denying that the future of Sitecore is composable and headless, so your roadmap should include a plan to incorporate the new products and technologies at some point. If you will be building new functionality or tackling new projects in the near term, consider building it headless to start down that road and avoid rework. 

However, if you like XP and want to stay there for a little while longer, Sitecore did announce that they would release a 10.4 version. Upgrading to XP 10.3 or 10.4 will buy you 2-3 more years of XP bliss before reaching the end of mainstream support. There are many benefits to moving to the composable DXP, but if XP is serving your business and you aren’t ready to switch, you can do what will likely be your final upgrade project (no need for upgrades with XM Cloud) and get a few more years of support. 

Utilize Those XP Features! 

Personalization. Content Testing. Campaigns. Goals. They are all available to you in XP and can help you better reach your customers! It’s no secret that modern users are expecting a web experience that is tailored to them, and Sitecore can help you achieve that.  

Goals are one of the simplest things you can implement in Sitecore’s Marketing Control Panel. If you haven’t already, identify 3-5 goals (high, medium, and low value) and place those on actions around the site to start building up Engagement Value Scores for your users. This is a really simple way to see how users engage with your site and who is engaging the most.  

As a next step, create a business case and a tactical plan for implementing features like A/B testing and content personalization. Start with your business KPIs or site content that is underperforming. One of my favorite Perficient strategy offerings is our Art of the Possible sessions that give a how-to overview of these features and get the ideas flowing. The Perficient digital strategy teams love partnering with clients to come up with use cases and alternative content that enable marketing teams to start using these features. 

Attend Sitecore Events 

Sitecore Symposium will not return until 2024. In the meantime, attend Sitecore events such as the regional DX series, SUGCON, and local user groups. Network with the Sitecore community and learn about the latest product stack and how it can serve your business down the road. The DX event in London just wrapped, the next one is in Boston on May 9, and future events are planned for Chicago, Dubai, and Sydney. Search for “sitecore user group” on LinkedIn to find results for user groups all around the world. Recent LA Sitecore user groups have been virtual, so you don’t necessarily have to attend in person!

Most, if not all, of the presentations at these events will be focused on the newest Sitecore products. It may not feel relevant or useful to attend these, but the information in these presentations can help in road mapping sessions, implementation planning, or building a business case for moving to headless or composable. Not to mention, as a later adopter of these newer technologies, you can benefit from networking and from hearing the experiences of partners and clients who have implemented each of these products. 

Conclusion 

XP is not dead! Despite the attention shifting to the latest and greatest of Sitecore, there are Sitecore clients who are staying on XP for now. You should definitely be starting the conversations for moving over to headless and/or to the composable platform, since that is the direction that Sitecore is moving. Perficient would love to help with roadmap and implementation planning – just reach out to us!

We are in an age of consumer data. Modern web tools and content management systems are making it easier than ever for businesses to gather data on their customers in order to tailor their web experiences. Additionally, with the increasing prevalence of first-party cookies, businesses can deliver individualized experiences to their users with a higher level of transparency. There has never been a better time to mobilize digital strategy efforts like user A/B testing, personalization, and email marketing. You can collect so much data to inform these efforts, but are you getting buried under the data wave or will you surf across it? 

The Importance of Organizing Data

If your customer data isn’t currently an asset to your organization, it could be a liability. If a customer contacts you today and asks you to delete their data, are you confident that you can locate and remove every piece of information on that customer? In this age of customer transparency and data privacy, organizations should not be collecting data just because they can and because they may use it for marketing purposes one day. Being organized and strategic about data is critical to staying compliant and secure and ensuring that your customer data is not a liability to your organization. 

A Brief Overview of CDPs

CDP stands for Customer Data Platform. My colleagues have written some great blog posts about CDPs: Why CDP is Your Golden Ticket to Business Growth and Understanding the Architecture of Sitecore Personalize & CDP. I often work with clients that have data in multiple systems that are completely unaware of each other, like a puzzle that needs to be assembled. CDPs give organizations a 360-degree view of each customer, pulling together data and interactions from each touchpoint with your business. CDPs are a very powerful tool in data organization and delivering individualized experiences to each customer. Sitecore offers a CDP as part of their composable DXP (Digital Experience Platform), and you do not have to use it with Sitecore’s CMS! It can be used alongside almost any web technology (such as Adobe or Drupal), so let’s dive deeper into why it could be the right fit for your organization. 

In the Wave of Data, Sitecore CDP is Your Surfboard

So, how can Sitecore’s CDP help you organize your data and make sure you’re surfing, not drowning? Here are some of the ways that stand out to me: 

• There are data limits. By default, Sitecore keeps the data that is most important to your organization and defines retention rules for the less important data. This ensures that you don’t keep too much data unnecessarily. 
• You can identify guests without using PII. Sitecore CDP enables you to identify your guests using a unique identifier that doesn’t involve personal data. Examples of this could be a loyalty number or a customer ID from your CRM system. However, passing PII to Sitecore CDP allows you to use additional features and create much more robust customer profiles. 
• Sitecore CDP helps support GDPR compliance. Sitecore has created APIs to support the data subject’s rights to erasure, data portability, data rectification, restrict processing, and automated decision making and profiling. These APIs, along with their associated documentation, help your organization play its correct role as a data controller under GDPR. 
• You can identify and group visitors from the same household if they use a common identifier. Sitecore CDP allows you to layer identifiers and iterate through them until you find a match for the current user. Let’s use an example of a married couple who have different email addresses but use the same loyalty number. We have already identified Spouse 1 as a customer, but Spouse 2 is visiting the site for the first time. We try and fail to identify Spouse 2 using their email address. We can then move on to our second identifier – loyalty number. Bingo! This person is actually not a total stranger, and we can identify them as a customer. 

You’re Not Alone Out There! 

Customer data is a very powerful resource for organizations, but it can easily become intimidating and overwhelming. Sitecore CDP provides a user-friendly interface and ways to identify and organize customers to make marketing and outreach easier. If you feel like you need some surfing lessons, Perficient can help. Reach out to us any time! 

Welcome to Part 2 of my blog about preparing for the PMP exam! In case you missed it, here is a link to Part 1, focused on preparation. Part 2 is focused on the days leading up to the exam and the exam itself. 

Test Center or At Home?

I chose to take the exam at a Pearson Vue testing center. This was an easy decision for me to make. I am located in metro Atlanta, so I have relatively easy access to several testing centers. I have also heard several horror stories about at-home exams from colleagues. Folks have told me stories of trouble accessing the software, proctors not knowing what to do, the internet going out, and even instantly being failed for looking off-screen. I did not want to risk the strictness of the at-home exam. 

Surprisingly, the testing center I chose had only one date open in January and no availability in February or March. I either had to take the exam on January 25 or wait until April. You do not want too much time between studying and your exam date. Be sure to look at availability and plan your test date strategically. I had 3.5 weeks between when I finished my Udemy course and when I took my test, and I thought this was a perfect amount of time.

Understand, Don’t Memorize

Honestly, the content of the exam really surprised me. It was much more difficult than I expected. Almost the entire exam was situational, where you need to know what the PM should do first/next or what the PM should have done to avoid a situation. There will be many questions that have 2-3 answer choices that seem like the correct choice, but there are nuances that make one choice the correct one. The only way to pass an exam so heavily weighted with those types of questions is to truly understand what you are learning. I spent a lot of time memorizing calculations, theories of motivation, types of power, etc., from the PMBOK Guide that I did not need. PMI clearly wants candidates to truly know how to manage projects, not just memorize calculations and theories. 

One thing that likely helped me achieve Above Target scores were the Mindset videos from Andrew Ramdayal’s Udemy course. I listened to these while getting ready the morning of the exam. These videos provided me with some general ways of thinking that helped me answer many situational questions. The top statement of his that I repeated to myself over and over during the exam was “always assess, don’t take action.” PMs should always assess the potential impacts of a situation prior to taking action. You don’t need to solve a problem if you don’t yet know if it’s a problem or will become one. 

Know the Exam Content Outline

I didn’t spend enough time reading and understanding the exam content outline (warning, this link is a download!) from PMI. It felt overwhelming, and I didn’t think I could completely take it in. The Udemy courses mostly focus on content from the PMBOK Guide, which is why I now believe I spent a lot of time memorizing content I didn’t end up needing. PMI states in the exam content outline that the exam content has some commonalities but is not bound by the PMBOK Guide. I did not purchase PMI’s Study Hall essentials, so I am not sure how the content of those tests compares to the actual exam.

I reviewed the exam outline again post-exam when PMI provided me the breakdown of how I scored in each domain and task. When reviewing one of the tasks where I scored low, I was shocked to see one of the answer choices for one of the questions I was stuck on on the outline. I had a question mark for review with two answer choices I was torn between, and one of the choices (that I did not pick) was written there verbatim. Facepalm!!! 

Be Careful Online

Hi, my name is Emily, and I have anxiety! I wanted to know everything there was to know about what I was walking into on exam day. The night before the exam, I spent several hours googling and scrolling through the r/pmp subreddit to consume as much content and real-life experiences as possible. If you plan to do the same – be careful. You must certify that you have not seen any exam questions prior to beginning the exam. Anyone can put anything out on the internet, so use Reddit and free-range googling with caution and back out immediately if you see anything that could possibly be a recreated exam question.

Night Before & Day Of

Knowing that I was facing four hours of reading 180 questions, I did not do any practice questions on the day of the exam. I did a few practice tests the day before the exam to keep my test fatigue to a minimum. On the day of the exam, I watched some Udemy videos on drag + drop questions and mindset and reviewed concepts in the PMBOK Guide (though if I had to do it again, I would review the exam content outline). Don’t overwork yourself the day of because the exam was a mental marathon. I felt like I had been hit by a truck when I left the testing center. 

Bring Food & Water

If you take the exam at a testing center, bring a snack and a water bottle with you. The rules stated that the only things I was allowed to access during breaks without permission was food and drink. The water fountains at the testing center were not working, so I was relieved that I had decided to bring a full water bottle in with me to store in my locker for breaks. You cannot eat or drink during your exam.

Utilize the Highlight and Strikethrough Tools

The exam took me the entire four hours to get through. Since almost every question was situational, I took my time reading the questions and highlighting keywords. I highlighted words such as procurement, agile, risk, etc. to make sure that I recognized exactly what the question was asking. Highlighting keywords also made sure that I slowed down and stayed focused on each question. Four hours is a long time, and it is very easy to lose focus. You can also utilize the strikethrough tool to mark through answer choices that you know are incorrect. Both tools significantly expedite your review process when you mark questions for review and need to come back to them at the end. 

These are my top tips for passing the exam. I am happy to answer more questions about my experience if you want to reach out to me on Linkedin. Happy studying, and good luck! 

I am thrilled to say that I finally earned my PMP certification and achieved above target in all areas! The exam is a beast, and unfortunately it took me over two years to understand the process, apply, and prepare. I am sharing my tips in hopes of making this experience easier and quicker for others on the same path. This is Part 1, where I am sharing my tips for preparation and studying.

Understanding the 35 PDUs 

In order to apply for the PMP, you must complete 35 hours of project management training (PDUs). This was one of the first points of confusion for me. PMI has a list of “authorized training partners” on their site and a list of courses they offer. I also receive tons of email spam about PMP prep courses that cost thousands of dollars. I did not realize until much later that you do not have to use one of these authorized training partners in order to receive your 35 PDUs for the application. One of my clients brought it to my attention that a Udemy course (which I receive for free through our Perficient business license) would count for my 35 PDUs. All I had to do was click enroll and complete the course! 

As for which Udemy courses I recommend, the one I completed for my 35 PDUs was taught by Joseph Phillips. However, looking around the internet while studying, I saw an overwhelming number of recommendations for this course taught by Andrew Ramdayal. 

Keep Everything Handy 

OneNote was helpful for organizing all PMP information and references I needed in one place. I had a note for my company policy related to paying for professional education, a timeline of my recent projects with all relevant information, and notes from the Udemy courses. I also kept a note with all useful links that I stumbled upon along the way so that I could have them handy. Some examples of links I kept track of are the exam content outline, sample questions, and Udemy courses. Keeping all information in one place will keep you from having to hunt for it when you need it (or, in my case, when you have to reactivate your application again)! 

Consider Using Time Off 

I thought I could complete my Udemy course in small chunks, using just a few hours at night per week. I have two kids – 6 years old and 3 years old. Attempting to complete this course in my free time was so much more difficult than I expected. Luckily, Perficient has a flexible time off policy that allows us to take time off as needed throughout the year. Having started my Udemy course in May, I decided to take a large chunk of my time off over the holidays to power through the rest of the course and submit my application. I spent probably 40-50 hours on the course between the videos, assignments, and practice questions. Whichever way you slice it, preparing for this exam is a big commitment that requires some sacrifice. 

Utilize Kindle Resources 

Kindle resources were very helpful for me during my study period. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle app and read e-books on your phone. I used the Libby app to borrow the PMBOK Guide from my local library and read it on my Kindle. I did end up purchasing the PMBOK Guide because I found the content very helpful. My Kindle Unlimited membership allowed me to download several free resources, such as flashcards. It was so convenient to be able to access these resources on my phone and be able to flip through a few flash cards at any time. 

In Part 2 of my blog, I will go over tips for the days leading up to and specifics related to the exam. See you then! 

Retrospectives, when run effectively, are an invaluable tool for an agile team. However, these meetings can get stale and tiring if you have one every ten days or if you’re on the same project for multiple years. Keeping your team engaged is key for gathering feedback that you can use to improve moving forward. Here are 5 tips that I have found helpful for keeping my retrospectives engaging. 

1. Make it fun

I have led way too many retros where I have felt like Mr. Lorensax at the front of the classroom saying “Bueller…? Bueller…?” and waiting for anyone to speak. I quickly realized that asking “What worked in this sprint?” and then waiting for the team to speak up simply does not work. It needs to be fun. Using an online collaboration tool like Mural that lets the team add colorful stickies, emojis, and images keeps it fun and allows the team to express themselves non-verbally. One of my favorite prompts is “Use an emoji, image, or gif to describe how this sprint went for you.” 

2. Make it anonymous

I am a huge fan of anonymous feedback. Yes, we are all professionals, we are all adults, and we should be able to give and receive honest feedback. However, we are also human and many team members are introverts. Not everyone may feel comfortable giving honest feedback in an open team setting such as a retrospective call and pushing someone out of their comfort zone could make you lose out on meaningful, honest feedback. Allowing anonymous feedback leads me into my next tip…

3. Gather feedback ahead of time

Create your feedback page and send it to your team to populate several days ahead of your retrospective meeting. This allows your team to contemplate over a few days rather than be put on the spot when they may forget what they wanted to say. This enables you to gather all feedback anonymously and allow those who would like to speak up to do so. Letting the team view the page ahead of time also enables team members to “vote” on feedback submitted by others ahead of the meeting. This reduces duplicate feedback, gives a visual idea of consensus, and enables team members other than the one who submitted the feedback to speak about it.

4. Make the purpose clear

If your team has been using agile for a while, they have likely been through quite a few retrospectives. Start the meeting by communicating the purpose and the goals so the team has a renewed energy and reminder of why they should participate. Encourage honesty, respect, and praise. Retrospectives are a great opportunity for you to stop and celebrate wins throughout the project and bolster the team’s positivity.

5. Follow through!

Following through on the retrospective feedback is crucial. Retrospectives will become much less meaningful to people over time if they don’t trust that their suggestions will be implemented. After the meeting, organize the feedback into key themes to track how those themes change throughout the project. Turn negative feedback into constructive action items that have an assignee and a due date to keep your team accountable. 

Retrospectives are a critical piece of the agile development process. If you find your retrospectives getting tired and predictable, try using some of these tips to refresh your meetings to make them as valuable as possible for your team. 

Project go-lives can be intense and take hours or even days. Following a detailed plan can streamline your go-live to help avoid a rollback and allow everyone to shut their computers as quickly as possible. Let’s discuss how to create a solid Cutover Plan to set yourself up for success. 

Why a Cutover Plan? 

First, the why. It is critical that the project manager creates the Cutover Plan (which could also go by several other aliases such as Go-Live, Release, or Launch Plan) collaboratively with the client stakeholders. Each client has a unique team structure, policies and procedures, and expertise. Because each client is unique, each go-live will be unique.

The team must discuss and document each step prior to go-live so that no one is surprised. The first step in creating your Cutover Plan is to set up a series of discussions with the client to talk through the known steps for launch and who will own each step. I almost think of these discussions as interviews with the client about their go-live processes and procedures. 

Your plan will start to come together through these initial discussions, as more of the minor steps needed will be revealed during the discussions of the major steps. These discussions should begin during the final development sprint or at the start of UAT (User Acceptance Testing). 

The Elements of a Cutover Plan 

The Cutover Plan should be extremely detailed and should have numbered steps for the team to follow in order. Each step in the plan should, at minimum, contain the following information: 

• Action/task
• Assignee/owner (ability to tag the assignee is a bonus!) 
• Due Date 
• Status 
• Comments/details about the task 

I will include every known/planned detail about the task in the comments section. Make sure to note if a task is a dependency or a blocker of another task. I include the time that the owner will perform the task (in all applicable time zones). There will often be tasks to send out emails during go-live, and the details section should include the list of recipients who will be included in that communication. There is no such thing as too much detail when it comes to go-live! 

Executing Your Plan 

When go-live activities have begun and the first step of the plan is in progress, you should review the plan with the team each day (usually during the daily scrum) to look at what is currently being done and what is up next. The project manager can update the plan as the team moves through the steps, or the team can update their status themselves as they begin and complete their individual tasks.

Expect to make a few tweaks to your document as steps are completed. It is natural in an agile environment to make changes as new information becomes known.

Conclusion 

The biggest key to a smooth go-live is preparation. You want to know as much as possible about what is ahead of you, and laying out detailed steps in sequential order in a Cutover Plan is one of the best ways to prepare. Leave no stone unturned and lead your team knowing that you’re ready! 

As an agile Project Manager, you face a lot of pressure to assure your stakeholders that your project is on track. You are the one the client is calling saying, “are we going to finish this thing on time??” It is imperative to have documentation that can eliminate all doubt that you will. Enter the Iteration Plan.

What is an Iteration Plan?

The Iteration Plan serves multiple purposes and is a living document that you maintain throughout the project. It can show the high-level roadmap using general bullet points or epics, as well as the granularity of each sprint using individual PBIs (Product Backlog Items), features, or user stories.

You can format this document in multiple ways depending on your project and personal preference, but the skeleton should show the sprint plan and each workstream involved in the project. You can use your project’s wiki software (I usually use Confluence, shown in the example below), you can organize your PBIs into sprints in Azure DevOps or cards in Trello, or you can even use Excel. Any party contributing to the project – your development team, the client, other third-party vendors or partners – should be represented in this document. Dependencies and risks are everywhere!

Basic Iteration Plan Example

Creating the Iteration Plan

Your project team should start creating the Iteration Plan during your initial kickoff or discovery sessions. These early discussions will involve estimations for big features and identifying dependencies for these features. The team will also determine the order at which certain tasks need to be done for features to be completed on time.

The Iteration Plan is essential for identifying and mitigating/eliminating risks early in the project. The riskiest areas of the project should be started as early as possible to attempt to accommodate the unexpected. For example: if you know an area of your project will require a technical proof-of-concept (POC), you will want to begin as early as possible in the project to tackle any issues that arise and keep the project on track. Risky or unknown features should be slated for Sprint 0 or Sprint 1 in the Iteration Plan since the results will inform the remainder of the project.

As the Project Manager, you should continuously update the Iteration Plan as the team completes features and learns more about the project’s requirements. As requirements are defined and features shift or get completed, the Iteration Plan will serve as a roadmap for the remainder of the project to give you a solid idea of how much work you have ahead of you and if you will finish as planned.

Example Scenarios

Here is an example scenario: your project has six development sprints, and you have estimated the search feature to take three sprints to complete. This means that the approved design and final requirements for search need to be delivered before the end of Sprint 3. This is where it is important to have all parties involved in the creation of this document – the design team will know how their deadline will impact the overall timeline and how missing it could have a large ripple effect. Dependencies for search could go even deeper: you could have a dependency on the client to even select a search technology prior to starting the design phase. It is important that the design team knows what out-of-the-box features come with the search tool when creating mockups.

Other example scenarios that an Iteration Plan can address:

• A portion of the site is dependent on a product information API being finalized. The API needs to be ready for consumption by Sprint 2 for all development to be completed on time. You determine that your team can deliver on time if the client provides test data by Sprint 2 and real data by Sprint 4.
• You’ve estimated content entry to take three sprints. To complete this work in time, the client must approve and deliver final content by the end of Sprint 2. Reviewers on the client team should be available and ready to review content starting in Sprint 4. Documenting these tasks clearly shows what is expected of each party at every step of the project.

Conclusion

The Iteration Plan is an essential document for an agile project. It maps out dependencies, addresses risks, and gives all project stakeholders confidence that there is a plan. I hope it helps you with your next project!