The Project Management Podcast

This episode is sponsored by the PMP Exam Simulator: Play Now: Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. This episode focuses on helping project managers enhance their job search by using modern social media tools. I was asked by PMI Long Island to give a presentation on the topic for their latest Career Event. There were about 25 "in transition" project managers attending the event and my presentation. This is the recording of this live presentation. It was delivered via WebEx, with me in California and the attendees in Long Island. Click here to download the PDF handout / checklist that is mentioned during the presentation. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Best PMP Exam Simulator: At the end of 2015, the Project Management Institute (PMI) is going to make changes to the way PMI certified project managers have to earn their Professional Development Units (PDUs). And in this episode we are going to explore these changes with John Kleine (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-kleine/10/aa1/613), who is PMI’s Global Manager of Certification Products. He is right at the heart of these changes.But before we start let me give you a disclaimer here: If you are not PMI certified and you never intend to become a certified PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, or any of the other PMI certifications, then stop listening right here. This interview is of no interest to you at all. If on the other hand you are PMI certified, then consider this episode mandatory listening. You need to know this! First of all you are going to hear that many rules and criteria about PDUs are going to remain the same, and so most of what you know about PDUs today will be true tomorrow. For example, you can still earn 30 Free PMP PDUs by listening to this podcast! But then we are going to delve into the details of the PMI PDU changes by looking at the new PMI Talent Triangle and by going through the current PDU categories and learning what changes are ahead.But before we start let me give you a disclaimer here: If you are not PMI certified and you never intend to become a certified PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, or any of the other PMI certifications, then stop listening right here. This interview is of no interest to you at all. If on the other hand you are PMI certified, then consider this episode mandatory listening. You need to know this! But before we start let me give you a disclaimer here: If you are not PMI certified and you never intend to become a certified PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, or any of the other PMI certifications, then stop listening right here. This interview is of no interest to you at all. If on the other hand you are PMI certified, then consider this episode mandatory listening. You need to know this! Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by PMP Exam Simulator: Have you ever had an urgent or unexpected project come across your desk? Not just an important project, but an urgent one? If you answer is “Yes - I have managed urgent projects” then you are actually in the minority because most of us will actually never have to manage such a project. Professor Stephen Wearne explains this in his book “Managing the Urgent and Unexpected” as follows: "Urgent and unexpected projects have to be rare in business or government to be economically and socially tolerable. Any such urgent and unexpected work demands an instant start, in contrast to the often lengthy processes of investigation, evaluation, development, selection and planning that is normal normal in businesses and public services before any proposed work is started. The chance that any one person except those in the emergency services will ever manage such a project is small." Stephen then continues in his book with saying something that I disagree with just a little bit. He says that it’s not possible to know who should learn the lessons learned from these urgent and unexpected projects in order to be prepared. In my opinion, I know exactly who should learn from them -- we project managers should! And that is why I have asked him to come onto the program. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: Today, we are going to take a look at a business process approach that is quite new and quite unique called Project Workflow Management. When I initially asked Daniel Epstein (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-epstein/1/10b/308) and Rich Maltzman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/exclaim) to come on the program for this interview I didn’t quite know what to expect. I knew that they had written a book about Project Workflow Management, but what I didn’t know is that the book is only part of the package. Their website http://www.pm-workflow.com not only offers many free tools to download but also a teaching aid CD. I also didn’t expect to find a quote by Dr. Harold Kerzner in which he says point blank that project workflow management appears to be the best alternative, and significantly more valuable to us project managers than complex methodologies and processes. So in today’s interview we will learn about workflow management from various angles - like how it differs from waterfall methodologies and Agile, its primary benefit, the tools it offers, how simple it is to apply, and of course how we project managers can start using this new approach that Dr Kerzner likes so much. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: Individuals make up our project teams, and we project managers, all too often, are gauged based on what these teams can accomplish, which is why building and maintaining high-performing teams should always be a priority for you and me. How to do this was recently described in an article titled Four Ways to Build and Maintain High-Performing Teams. And so I’m very pleased to welcome Maria Kozlova (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/maria-kozlova/9/76/336) from Comindware on the show today to discuss these four ways. Oh… and spoiler alert… one of them is collaboration. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This interview with Joy Gumz (www.projectauditors.com) and Pam Welty (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/pam-welty/25/230/755) was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. This interview is based on the case study presentation "Managing the Devilish Details: A Case Study on Using BIM". In both the presentation and our interview Joy Gumz and Pam Welty discuss how BIM is being used during the design and construction of an office building in San Francisco, California. We review what BIM is (according to the BIM Handbook it is "a modeling technology and associated set of processes to produce, communicate, and analyze building models"), we hear how it was used during design and construction, and we discuss why BIM was a major factor in the overwhelming success of the project. We recommend that you watch the Bim In Action Video before listening to this interview because BIM is a very visual approach. And by spending 2 minutes to watch the video first you will have a better understanding of what BIM can do. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. This interview is an accompaniment to the interview about Building Information Modeling (BIM) that we did with Joy Gumz (www.projectauditors.com) and Pam Welty (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/pam-welty/25/230/755). The video shows you BIM in action and we recommend that you watch it before listening to the recorded interview, so that you can better follow along. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode # 280. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. This episode is all about getting the most out of a project management conference and we have a checklist for you as well. The idea for this episode and the checklist came to me a few days ago when I signed up for one of PMI's Global Congresses. I invested about $2,500 in my 3-day attendance at the congress. That's the congress fee, the plane ticket, the hotel so I decided you know what, with so much money at stake here, $2,500 quite a bit of chunk of money, I want to make this a success. And so I decided to develop this checklist for you and for me because we project managers attend many conferences and I remember quite clearly how disappointed I was of some of these conferences because I realized I didn’t get as much out of them as I had hoped. So I decided instead of continuing to hope for more success, I would have to plan for it. This checklist contains my personal best practices for conference success and I really hope that it allows you to plan for a successful conference as well. And of course, this checklist is available for download on The PM Podcast™ website. Just go to www.pm-podcast.com, Episode #280 and you'll see a link to download it. For the rest of this episode, we are now going to go through this checklist together. It has 3 sections --- before the conference, during the conference and after the conference. Or because we are all project managers here, it's nothing but the plan-do-check-act cycle. And of course the first section of the checklist before the conference that corresponds to the planning portion of the plan-do-check-act cycle. Frankly if you want to stop right now, just download the checklist and work on it offline, I am not going to be angry at all because the checklist is quite self-explanatory but continuing to view this video to listen to this episode here will probably help you because I'm going to give you a lot of background information and insights and ideas. Alright then, let's get's started with planning our conference attendance. It will come as no surprise to you that the first thing we're going to have to do is we are going to have to define goals. Why are we planning or attending this conference? So describe what you hope to gain or learn at the conference. Do stay realistic and plan to be able to achieve only one or two goals maximum. If you say yourself, 7,8, 9, 10 goals then suddenly everything becomes important and when everything is important, nothing is really important anymore. As an example here personally whenever I attend a conference, I want to bring value to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast™ and I often achieve in various ways by recording episodes, by recording interviews right there live on site or just bringing home new ideas, business cards of guests I can invite in the future or episodes that I record on my own. Now that we know what are goals are for attending the conference, let's define some metrics. Without metrics, we can't measure whether we've been successful. It could be the number of presentations that you’ve attended, the PDUs that you have earned or new ideas that you've generated, the number of people or vendors that you have met. Maybe you'll go there to meet some clients so how many client meetings did you have? Or even simpler, how many b

Play Now: This Interview with Mario Trentim was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. Most of us rely on soft skills, communication and leadership to manage stakeholders. But while they're helpful, interpersonal skills are far from being the sole way to implement stakeholder management. As a matter of fact, there are hard skills in stakeholder management - tools, techniques and methods that should be diligently applied to enhance stakeholder management and improve project success rates. In this interview we learn how Mario Trentim stopped the trend of failing projects when he was a PMO manager by researching better ways to manage stakeholders. We discuss an effective stakeholder management cycle and framework as well as how to involve stakeholders in value creation. Encouraged by the success of his findings Mario went ahead and wrote a book about it. It is titled Managing Stakeholders As Clients: Sponsorship, Partnership, Leadership, and Citizenship. He was invited to The PMI Global Congress to present these findings because he won the prestigious Kerzner award, which recognizes a project manager who most emulates the professional dedication and excellence of Dr. Harold Kerzner. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This Interview with Frank Parth was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. Multiple independent research efforts are beginning to show a more consistent approach to developing successful megaprojects in the areas of oil/gas, mining, and construction projects than have been used in the past. These megaprojects are characterized by high value (often defined as greater than $1 billion), comparably high benefits, years-long timelines, and correspondingly high risk. While there have been great advances in both project management methodologies and in the tools the project managers have available (such as CAD/CAM, BIM, and advanced project scheduling and budgeting tools), the complexity of these multi-year programs has advanced even more quickly than the tools have. Construction and engineering projects have become more complex and ambitious faster than our ability to manage them. Oil/gas/infrastructure projects now are much longer in duration and far more complex than even ten years ago, with concomitant increased risks and failures. The International Energy Agency estimates that meeting global energy needs will require investing more than $17 trillion by 2030. In this interview Frank Parth (http://www.projectauditors.com) looks at the classical project management approaches that focus on delivering the final product within cost and schedule constraints once the project enters the execution phase. We talk about multiple lines of research that show that the ultimate success of a complex program has very little dependency on how the program is managed once the construction phase begins and far greater dependency on what happens before that phase begins. If a $10 billion dollar refinery runs late and over budget, the failure has started long before the project schedule was created or the engineering/procurement/construction (EPC) process began. All of the serious research in this area shows that the only part of the effort where traditional project management approaches make sense in the later stages, the engineering and EPC stages. Earlier phases take a different approach to ensure success. Furthermore we discuss an overview of current project management practices; current research on megaprojects; development stages for efforts on this scale; and some recommendations. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This Interview with Brian Irwin was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. While organizations might find it easier to first address the processes and tools they will use when they’re delivering agile projects, it is individuals and their interactions that ultimately determine the level of enduring agile success an organization is able to realize. The change required to enable long-term agility is cultural in nature. For change to occur, the beliefs and values held by individuals in the organization must be examined. Organizational change cannot be mandated through top-down edicts and policy. An environment that fosters both individual and organizational transformation must be created. One way to help individuals through a change of this magnitude is through the use of deep questioning which is born out of genuine curiosity. In his presentation at the congress (and also in our interview) Brian Irwin outlines a method of critical thinking through the use of Socratic questioning to enable individual, guided discovery and provides an example of its use. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: Another year has gone by and so it is once again time for our annual “bloopers” episode. Yes, this is the episode when we take you behind the scenes and have some fun. And so, here are about a dozen or so recording snippets that we have withheld from you, because things just went awfully wrong in the studio and we had to edit them out. Enjoy - And have a Happy New Year. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This Interview with Jim DePiante was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. If securities dealers sold securities the way we project managers sell our projects, the authorities would throw those securities dealers in jail. A project has all the characteristics of any investment. There is the asset itself, the price, the return and the risk associated with the return. How is it then that project managers routinely “sell” investments without knowing the price, nor what the asset or its return will be, all with a straight face and without going to jail!? Projects must be understood as investments. It’s not enough to say that a project is like an investment. A project is an investment, strictly speaking. In this interview, we review the four characteristics of an investment/project. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This Interview with David Hillson was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. When most people talk about risk in projects, they are thinking only about uncertain future events that would have a negative effect on achievement of project time and cost objectives. However the definition of risk in the risk chapter of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge includes much more than mere threats to the project schedule or budget, and other risk standards agree. If we limit our view of risk to look at only one part of the risk picture, we will not be proactively managing all the risks that might affect the success of our project, and we will end up taking risks without knowing it. In this interview with David Hillso we explore the other types of risk that are usually missed from the typical risk process. Drawing on leading thinking and current best practice, we explore the full range of project risks that need to be managed, starting from the proto-definition of risk as “uncertainty that matters”. Risks that matter include those with positive effects as well as those with negative effects (opportunities as well as threats). They can also affect any project objective, not just time or cost. In addition, uncertainty in projects arises from much more than future uncertain events (“stochastic risks”). Other sources of uncertainty include variability (“aleatoric risk”), ambiguity (“epistemic risk”), and emergence (“ontological risk”). With illustrative examples of each type of risk, and practical response strategies for managing them, this interview helps us to identify all types of risk that might affect our projects, and offers ways for us to tackle them effectively. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: Click to view the mosaic... Episode 300! Who would have thought back in 2005 when I bought myself a cheap Logitech desk microphone to record the first episode that this little hobby of mine would take all of us to this point here. I certainly had no such expectations. And for this 300th episode I decided to turn the tables. This is our very first “Ask Me Anything” episode. So I reached out to ten project managers who were guests previously here on the show, and I asked them to send me their question. The question could either be personal or project management related. And because I contacted ten project managers and asked each of them to send me one question I did of course end up with 15 questions. Talk about scope creep! Here are my guests and their questions: Margaret Meloni - http://melonicoaching.com/ Do you use project management in your personal life? Jack Ferraro - http://www.myprojectadvisor.com/ How has your customer/listener changed over the years? Lindsay Scott - http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/ How do you find your podcast guests? How do you keep The PM Podcast relevant? What disappoints you about project management today? Frank Saladis - http://www.linkedin.com/pub/frank-saladis/0/226/4aa What is it that makes you unique and draws people to you and the podcast? Kevin Reilly - http://krpm-training.com/ What do you consider to be the most important emerging trend that will have the biggest impact on the evolution of project management in the next 5 years. Susanne Madsen - http://www.susannemadsen.com/ What was the most memorable unforeseen event with The PM Podcast? What whast your biggest "aha" moment in project management? Mark Perry - http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast.htm What are your recommendations for project managers who would like to start their own business like you have? Elizabeth Harrin - http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/ What is the most surprising question that a project management student has asked you? What can a project manager do if their sponsor is never available? Craig Wilson - http://www.matincor.com/ How has Agile impacted the career of the project manager in teams and companies? Todd Williams - http://www.ecaminc.com/ What are the disconnects between the PMP exam and what your podcast listeners actually want to hear? Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This Interview with Joseph Flahiff was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. No other single factor has as much predictive power of the success or failure of your projects and programs than the health of your teams. Today more and more work is being performed by teams, both in operations and in new service/product development. But what exactly is a team? What distinguishes great teams? Is it possible to create great teams, or do they just happen when you are lucky? This interview will explore these concepts and help you with specific suggestions to transform your team into a team that rocks. You will learn that teams that rock have three things in common: a sense of safety, mutual accountability for goals, and they are necessarily interdependent. Teams are the engine that gets most work done in business today, and great teams can make your entire organization grow. By the end of the discussion you will see, that you too can create a team that rocks if you will focus your efforts on creating a context where teams that rock can flourish. In particular we discuss creating a team culture that encourages collaboration not just cooperation, cultivating a sense of safety, encouraging team members to know each other, and by creating a more distributed decision making model subtly. While shifting the culture of a team is not easy, it is imperative to do if you want to create a team that rocks. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Coming very soon to a podcast near you... :-) Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.