Student Profile: Francesco Lertora, PMP

I started working as an electronic Digital Designer for a semiconductor company, designing and testing complex Systems-on-Chip. Here I started managing small groups of very high skilled people to design devices that have been presented on international conferences and Journals.

After years working with the leading-edge microelectronics technologies I decided to accept a challenge, to become the CTO of a start-up working in the RFID, sensors and wireless sensors networks businesses.

For about eight years, this has been a huge challenge, managing the technical staff, engineering products that had to directly face the market, managing customer support, etc... I had the chance and lucky enough to understand what really means working for big companies and to start-up something brand new from the ground. A lot of lessons learned.

Currently I'm working as software architect for a company whose main products and services are for the electronic functional safety. I manage a team designing software specifically designed for Industrial and Automotive applications. We have also as customers the major microelectronics companies.

The first thing that I studied was the PMBOK Guide.

What I recommend that other students do duing the last week of their scheduled exam is to see the final exam as a marathon athlete sees his 42km challenge. In particular for a non-native English speaker there will be a further stress to correctly translate the somewhat weird questions, so manage your test as a marathon athlete would do, doing each day a given test with a simulator, with a programmed growing number of questions. Stop this test sequence the day before the real exam. Don't be discouraged if you'll will get weird questions from the simulator. Think about the marathon, the fact you had the chance to understand how your brain will react to the "real thing".

Francesco Lertora, PMP