Ala' Yasin Abuhijleh

PERSPECTIVE: Importance of Sprint Retrospective

One of the four items in Agile Manifesto is: value individuals and interactions over processes and tools And one of the twelve principles induced from the manifesto is: Build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done Unfortunately, in practice, most of Scrum … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Projects Failure Countermeasures – no templates

Very often, in training session and discussions, I am ask ed to share project management templates. Requesters believe by using templates project management will be easier and projects will succeed! My consistent response is: I won’t share any! Don’t judge me! I am not mean. I am just against anti-patterns1; relying on

PERSPECTIVE: ITIL where to start

Do you expect us to implement all of this? this needs years and years! How can we master all of this? this is huge!Where should we start? Typical questions I hear as an ITIL Trainer and consultant. Before tackling them, I admit that ITIL scope is huge. It covers the complete life-cycle of any IT … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Projects Failure – Countermeasure 1: Is it really a project!

Projects failure is contextual! it differs from project to another depending on tolerances, limitations and conditions. a project is usually considered a failure if : It exceeded the allocated time, budget along with the tolerances. It failed to deliver the expected outputs. Hence outcomes are not achieved and expected benefits cannot be realized. This is … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: projects and benefits realisation trap

As a project manager working in a customer/vendor environment, and if you’re experienced enough, I believe you faced a situation where the customer shifted the discussing of a change request into a concern about the final benefits of the project. You start hearing statements like “I don’t want to discuss a change here or there…”, … Continue reading →

REPHRASE: Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both

“Kanban and Scrum – Making the most of both” is a very nice lightweight reading – thanks InfoQ – that discusses how Kanban and Scrum are related to each other, how they are different and how to make the best out of both! Yes, The best out of both! Yes, they can be applied together! … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Magento, the awesome slow eCommerce Platform!

Magento is cool! it’s getting a lot of traction and popularity. It is getting better with every release, and it’s definitely empowering thousands of on-line stores world-wide. No question about that! However, I believe there is something intrinsically wrong with Magento! Magento, from my experience, is most of the time is below customers and technologist … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Improvement, The Tricky Part

I rarely meet a business or technology executive who is satisfied with the effectiveness and efficiency of IT processes and activities. Common complains are response time, things falling in the cracks, under estimating, incomplete solutions….etc. Complains usually come with complete despair! we tried multiple processes, best practices….etc but nothing works!

ANNOUNCEMENT: ITIL Expert Certification

Finally I got my ITIL V3 expert accreditation after 2.5 years of study, practice and training. The journey started on December 2009 when I sat for the foundation exam. Since then, I have delivered ITIL foundation training , studying, practicing and passing the intermediate exams. Why it took me all that time? because I did … Continue reading →

REVIEW: Web Operations – Keep Data on Time

If you’re a technician or technical manager working on a large-scale web site reading this book is not an option. This is a must-read book. However,if you don’t work in such environment, don’t bother reading the book! It will be very hard to related and understand. The book is composed of 17 chapters collected … Continue reading →

Review: Enabling IT FInancial Transparency

The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate how to calculate IT costs in a scientific way and not guessing. IT financial management is one of the most complicated subjects to address. From a business perspective IT financial transparency is usually a pain. The start of the presentation was a bit boring and I was … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Dispelling some Myths about ITIL

Occasionally, I find people surprised of my interest in ITIL, knowing that the industry I work in is Internet. With curiosity: “How do you apply ITIL on website and internet!” people ask. In other occasions I found people surprised that I am implementing this gradually without having this as part of a formal and official … Continue reading →

REPHRASE: You’re a PMP, why PRINCE2 then?

In a region where PMP certification is assumed all-what-you-need for project management, occasionally, I have to answer the question “Why PRINCE2, you’re already a PMP?”. PRINCE2 stands for PRojects In Controlled Environment. PRINCE2 is a project management methodology,that is mainly concerned with establishing, maintaining and controlling the project environment.

TIP: Market your mistakes!

Usually, when one make a mistake at work, the first thing s/he thinks about is how s/he can hide this from his/her manager. right? From my humble experience, I usually think about it differently: How can I tell my manager about this. Strange? Not really, telling your manager about your mistakes is the best thing … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Portfolio Management, Resource Allocation and Morale

In ITIL, Portfolio management is part of the service strategy, which reflects the importance of the process. Portfolio Management is very important to have a centralized place where all services starting from conceptualization till retirement are listed. Most importantly, through the service pipeline, we study the services business cases, decide on what services to offer, and charter … Continue reading →

REVIEW: Scaling Lean and Agile Development

A very interesting, vivid and beneficial presentation! The purpose of the presentation is to illustrate “how” to scale lean and Agile across multisite. It presents practices and tips related to adoption of offshore, multisite development and coordination within large scrum teams. I liked that fact that was presented at the beginning: “big projects” can be … Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE: Protect your Strategic Assets

Why does a client reach you or choose you to provide him with an IT solution or service? Definitely because of the value he believes you’ll be delivering to him. In return of value, he pays you money and, supposedly, enjoys the value you’ve delivered to him. The value is delivered to the client, by deploying your assets (capabilities and resources) … Continue reading →

TIP: Capture The Real Value

Most of the time, we compare the work we perform with our salary, and we limit our effort, dedication to excellence and learning to salary, assuming that doing more or better is really a waste of time, effort and resources. After all you do not want your employer to get advantage of you. Is this … Continue reading →

PMP Preparation Course – Ramadan 2016

In coordination with NewHorizons Qatar, I conducted a two weeks PMP preparation evening course for a group of enthusiastic and motivated professionals in Doha, Qatar. Though the time was very short as it’s the holy month of Ramadan, It was really interesting and challenging I have personally learned a lot from the experiences of the … Continue reading →

Public PMP Reparation Course April 2016

Another session of evening PMP preparation course was held this month in New Horizons Qatar. 15 enthusiastic delegates participated with great determination to pass the PMP exam. I have never been challenged with same amount of questions that reflects a real deep practices and experience in project management. I would like to thank all of … Continue reading →

Public PMP Reparation Course May 2016

Another session of evening PMP preparation course was held this month in New Horizons Qatar. 16 enthusiastic delegates participated with great determination to pass the PMP exam. Time went very quickly as we moved between slides, Business case and Question Races – which were introduced for the the first time in this course -. I … Continue reading →

TRAINING: ITIL Foundation – ATKINS – February 2016

Yes we did it! It was really a mission impossible. It was really very challenging to have a complete ITIL foundation training in addition to the exam over one weekend. However, I realized, if you have the right delegates it’s is doable, and that what happened at ATKINS Doha on Feb 19th and 20th. All … Continue reading →

TRAINING: PMP preparation course – Ministry of Health, Qatar – Feb 2016

Had a nice 2 weeks training highly educated and energetic engineers of the Ministry of Health in Qatar. The course was a real pleasure and I learned a lot from the group. Their questions and discussions reflected a very good experience and knowledge in the field of expertise, as well as, project management. It has … Continue reading →

My First Course on Udemy – ITIL Foundation 2011 is live – Fully in Arabic

My first course on Please help me to spread the word and let me know if you or any of your friends is interested and I will provide a discount coupon https://www.udemy.com/itil-foundation-2011-arabic/

TRAINING: Public PMP course at MTC Qatar, October 2015

Very interesting, very rewarding and unprecedented group; just few words to express the joy I had training this course at MTC Qatar. Thanks a lot Zaher, Ahmad, Ahmad, Raneem, Tarneem, John, Maisara, Ali and Mohammad for making this an extra ordinary experience. Over 2 weeks of evening session we had a lot of interesting discussions and … Continue reading →

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Version of ITIL Foundation course in Arabic

I am pleased to announce that I have completed revamping the content of the Arabic ITIL Foundation course. Enhancements included but not limited to: Added animation to slides to enhance building knowledge and concepts gradually Full revision of all slides notes Revised workshops and created ideal/sample answers Added more slides to illustrate important concepts and … Continue reading →