The Project Management Podcast

Click here to download the checklist for getting the most out of a project management conference... Use this worksheet to help you prepare for your next project management conference. It will make the difference between merely attending the conference and succeeding at attending the conference. Did you like this episode of The PM Podcast? Did you like it well enough to take two minutes and go to the iTunes store to give us a rating or review?  Yes? I would really appreciate it!  Please go to http://www.pm-podcast.com/review and tell the world how well you think we are doing.

Play Now: Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. We project managers attend many conferences. And I remember quite clearly how disappointed I was after some of these project management conferences because I realized that I didn’t get as much out of them as I had hoped. So I decided that instead of continuing to hope for more success, I would have to plan for it. This video and the accompanying checklist contain my personal best practices for conference success. I hope that it will help you plan for a successful conference as well. Please feel free to share any improvements ideas with me in the comment section below. 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 t

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam: If you're going to bother holding a meeting, then you should meet like you mean it. This statement comes from Wayne Turmel (http://www.greatwebmeetings.com/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayneturmel) who has been speakinga and consulting on communications and successful meetings in particular for a very long time. His latest book is called Meet Like You Mean It: A Leader's Guide To Painless And Productive Virtual Meetings. In the book and also in our interview he argues that if you're a project manager, you have to learn how to use today's online meeting tools to get great input, maximum participation, and engagement from your participating project team members. Virtual meetings should be an integral part of the way we work and manage our projects, and not an excuse to answer emails. 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 # 278. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Before we get started, I have a quick favor to ask of you. Do you like The Project Management Podcast™? Do you like it well enough to take a couple of minutes and write an iTunes review for us? If you do, then please go to www.pm-podcast.com/review or just open up the iTunes Store and tell others what you think of The Project Management Podcast™. Thank you! And now back to today's topic. If you're going to be holding a meeting, then you should meet like you mean it. This statement comes from Wayne Turmel who has been speaking and consulting on communications and on successful meetings in particular for a very long time. His latest book is called "Meet Like You Mean It, A Leader's Guide to Painless and Productive Virtual Meetings". In the book and also in our interview, he argues that if you are a project manager, you have to learn how to use today's online meeting tools to get great input, maximum participation and engagement from your participating project team members. Virtual meetings should be an integral part of the way we work and how we manage our projects and not to be used as an excuse to answer emails in the background. Also, we are giving away two copies of his book. One copy as always is reserved for our Premium listeners. So if you are a premium subscriber, you are automatically entered into the drawing for one book. Everyone else gets a chance to win the other book. Please go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast. Look for the giveaway announcement and participate. And now since everyone has joined our meeting on time today, let's get started. Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Wayne Turmel, President of www.GreatWebMeetings.com. Cornelius Fichtner:Hello, Wayne and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™! Wayne Turmel: Thanks, Cornelius. It's nice to be back or wherever it is that we are. Cornelius Fichtner: It's been a while. Wayne Turmel: It has! I think it was just before the sad demise of the Cranky Middle Manager show. Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, you have to write more books then I can invite you more often. Wayne Turmel: Okay! Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! So we are going to talk about your new book today, parts of your new book. It is called "Meet Like You Mean It, A Leader's Guide to Painless and Productive Virtual Meetings" and we are going to open up that book and we are going to take a look at a couple of chapters inside of it, the technology chapter and the planning chapter. But first of, what's your personal favorite technology or tools when you are holding a virtual meeting these days and why do you choose that particular one? Wayne Turmel: Yeah, a lot of people are hung up on the technology. Truthfully, as a business and everything, we're platform agnostic. I don't really h

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam: Prior to signing any project statement of work (SOW) it should be reviewed by your legal team. However, while legal experts understand legalities that will help you out in court, they are not project experts who can determine if a particular SOW will provide you with the product that you anticipate, need, or desire. Todd C. Williams (http://ecaminc.com/) on the other hand is such an expert. He has reviewed dozens of statements of work for his clients. He analyzes the methodology, scope, deliverables and proposed cost, and finds areas that point to weaknesses in the ability to deliver or misalignment in intentions. In our discussion we look at the main reasons behind doing a formal SOW review, at the factors that show whether a formal review makes sense or not, identify some of areas of concern during a review, and learn why a comma can make all the difference in the world. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.  Coming Soon... 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: We are once again on a call with Dr David Hillson (http://www.risk-doctor.com) to discuss project risk management. David is well-known internationally as a leading thinker and expert practitioner in risk management, and he consults, writes and speaks widely on the topic. He specializes in both strategic and tactical risk, with a particular interest in opportunities and risk psychology. In this interview, we look at project risk responses. Or to be precise… we look at them to find out why people seem to forget about them. The issue at hand is the fact that the typical project risk management process doesn’t include a step to "Implement Risk Responses". So it is common for people to identify and assess their risks, develop responses, record these responses in the risk register, and then… do nothing! We forget. We simply forget. To help us get around this, David is campaigning for not just one, but two additional steps to be included into the project risk management processes. So that we don’t forget. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.  Coming soon...! 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.

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview and transcript... This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: This week we continue our journey into project risk management with a second interview that I did with Dr David Hillson (http://www.risk-doctor.com). We will discuss “overall project risk”, which is different from “individual project risks”. At the center of our discussion is the situation when your project sponsor or client asks you “How risky is this project?” The concept of “overall project risk” is mentioned in the PMBOK Guide as well as the PMI Practice Standard for Project Risk Management, but it seems not too well understood and few project managers are using it. So let’s change that. As you’ll hear in our conversation, David will be presenting on this topic at an upcoming PMI Congress shortly after we recorded this interview. He has made his paper available to us all and you can download a PDF version right here... I also recommend that you read the following paper from David: http://risk-doctor.com/pdf-files/ADV05.pdf And of course you can always stop by at the David Hillson Author Page on Amazon, where you will find all the books he has published. 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 # 273. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. You are listening to one of our Premium Episodes. Thank you for your support of The Project Management Podcast™. Your subscription fees help us pay for our expenses. This week, we continue our journey into project risk management with a second interview that I did with Dr. David Hillson. We will discuss overall project risk which is different from individual project risk. At the center of our discussion is the situation when your project sponsor or client asks you 'how risky is this project?' The concept of overall project risk is mentioned in the PMBOK® Guide, as well as in the PMI® practice standard for project risk management. But it seems not too well understood and few project managers are using it. So let's change that. As you'll hear in our conversation, David will be speaking on this topic at an upcoming PMI® Congress shortly after we recorded this conversation. He has made his paper that he is going to present there available to us all and you can download it as part of Episode 273 on the Podcast website. And now, tell me, how risky is your project? Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Dr. David Hillson, the risk doctor. Cornelius Fichtner:Good afternoon, David and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™! Dr. David Hillson: Thank you very much, Cornelius. I enjoyed our first conversation. I'm looking forward to this one as well. Cornelius Fichtner: Wonderful! Let's jump right in. How do you define the term 'overall project risk'? Dr. David Hillson: Well, that's a very interesting question. There are of course answers which came directly from the PMBOK® Guide and also from other guides in the world of project management. So if we went to the PMI® practice standard for project risk management which is published in 2009 or the PMBOK® Guide itself, we have a very clear definition. Most people know the definition of individual risk, an uncertainty or condition that if it occurs has a positive or negative effect on a project's objectives and within the project, there are lots of those. But the practice standard and the PMBOK® Guide also include this other concept and it says overall project risk represents the effective uncertainty on the project as a whole and it goes on to say this is more than the sum of individual risks on a project. So we have a definition in the PMI world. There are similar definitions

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: My guest today is none other than Dr David Hillson (http://www.risk-doctor.com). You may have heard of him as the Risk Doctor and having him on the program is a great opportunity for us. In fact… project opportunity management is actually at the center of todays discussion! Here is what David says about opportunities: "Most PMs still don’t get is the idea of upside risk or opportunity - or more accurately, they understand the theory but they don’t put it into practice." So in a moment we will not only learn what opportunities are, but more importantly we’ll hear David discuss several ways of identifying as well a properly managing them on your project. Since this is the first (and long overdue) appearance of David on The PM Podcast, here is a little bit about him first: Known globally as The Risk Doctor, Dr David Hillson is an award-winning thought-leader and expert practitioner who consults and writes widely on risk management. His ground-breaking work in project risk management was recognised by honorary fellowships from both the Association for Project Management (APM) and the Project Management Institute (PMI®). He was also named “Risk Personality of the Year” in 2010-11. David is an active Fellow of the Institute of Risk Management (IRM), and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) to contribute to its Risk Commission. He is also a Chartered Fellow with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). I also recommend that you read the following Risk Doctor Briefings: How Do I Find Opportunities (PDF)... Working Backwards to Opportunities (PDF)... Opportunity Management Means Scope Creep? (PDF)... Each of these briefings is related to the topic of our discussion. 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 # 272. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you for joining us today. My guest is none other than Dr. David Hillson. You may have heard of him as the risk doctor and having him on the program is a great opportunity for us. In fact, project opportunity management is actually at the center of our discussion. Here is what David says about opportunities. He says that most project managers still don't get the idea of upside risk or opportunity or more accurately, they understand the theory but they don’t put it into practice. So in a moment, we will not only learn what opportunities are but more importantly we'll hear David discuss several ways of identifying as well as properly managing them on your project. Since this is the first and long overdue appearance of David on The Project Management Podcast™, here is a little bit about him first. Globally known as the risk doctor, Dr. David Hillson is an award-winning thought leader and expert practitioner who consults and writes widely on risk management. His groundbreaking work in project risk management was recognized by honorary Fellowships from both the Association for Project Management and the Project Management Institute. He was also named risk personality of the year in 2010 and 2011. David is an active Fellow of the Institute of Risk Management and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts to contribute to its risk commission. He is also a Chartered Fellow in the Chartered Management Institute. And now, here's your opportunity to learn about opportunity. Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Dr. David Hillson, the risk doctor. Cornelius Fichtner:Hello David! Welcome to The Project Management Podcast™! Dr. David Hillson: Cornelius, thank you very much. I'm very much looking forward to talking to you today. Cornelius Fichtner: And we are honored to have you frankly because you do call yourself the risk

Play Now: Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. In this video we answer the following questions about Agile Project Management from Alicia Aurichio, PMP: What is the most common or widely-used form of Agile? What types of industries are using Agile? What are the success metrics of adopting Agile in the organization? Some business groups are adopting "Agile" for business processes, as well. Is there an Agile business method that is different from the traditional Agile Software Development methodologies? How do you obtain hands-on experience in Agile PM, if you are not currently working for an organization that uses agile? 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 # 271. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. Today, I'm going to discuss and answer a number of questions that I have received from Alicia Aurichio. They are all about Agile project management. She sent them to me pretty much out of the blue via email and I thought: You know what? They would make a good basis for a Project Management Podcast episode. And here is Alicia's first question. It's all about the various flavors of Agile. Here she is herself with the question… Alicia Aurichio: What is the most common or widely-used form of Agile? Cornelius Fichtner: Alicia asked this question because she realized that while Agile project management seems to be becoming synonymous with Scrum or even the CSM certification that that is not necessarily true. She also notices that in her experience when you're looking for a project management job and they talk about Agile, they either mean Scrum or some in-house Agile methodology that they developed. So what is the most common or widely-used form of Agile? Based on the results from the 8th annual state of Agile survey from version 1, it is indeed Scrum. As you can see in this graphic here. More than 50% of their respondents said: "We use Scrum as our preferred Agile methodology in house. And then there are also those that use a mix of Scum and XP. But as you can see, Alicia also correctly identified that there is this custom hybrid. So you take a few of these various Agile methodologies and you mix them together so that it makes sense in your organization. Scrumban is also there. There's Kanban. We have Lean and we also have the others that would be things like Crystal or feature-driven development. These are the minor Agile methodologies there. But obviously, Scrum is king the Agile methodology world. Alicia's second is this… Alicia Aurichio: What types of industries are using Agile? Cornelius Fichtner: In the early days of Agile, the focus was on software development. You can see this clearly represented in the first few words you'll find on the Agile Manifesto website. They read: "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and by helping others do it." But as time progressed, more and more people realized how applicable Agile was to other industries, to their industries as well. And today, you might very well say that any industry should be able to adopt Agile in one form or another. You can see this trend of Agile moving away from being IT-centric. When you take a look at the website of the Agile Alliance in particular, take a look at their annual conferences and you'll see that more and more presentations were added to the agenda every year discussing non-IT applications of Agile. Here are a few titles that you'll find: Scrum in Sales, Agile in Academics, Lessons in Agile Product Development, Agile in an embedded, product-line development, Rapid Product Design in the wild, and also Agile in the Federal Space. Those are just six that I found. There are many more of these non-IT applications of Agile. I have one more example for you, very close to my heart and that is the use of Ag

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: How do you know whether or not someone is actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing on your project? Well.. we could assume that if they are assigned to your project then they must be working on the project, right? Well… maybe. But sometimes it is not so clear. Sometimes you just don’t have that “warm fuzzy feeling”. And that pretty much is the point where today’s interview with Margaret Meloni (http://www.margaretmeloni.com/) starts. From here we will explore how such situations can occur, how line managers could be responsible for causing this kind of feeling in us project managers and we’ll take a look at a few examples from Margaret’s professional life. But most importantly  of course, we will look at what can be done to both avoid and deal with such situations. This PM Podcast interview is based on Margaret Meloni's coachinar titled 3 Reasons People Do Not Do Their Jobs (And What to Do About It)... 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 # 270. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. How do you know whether or not someone is actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing on your project? Well, we could assume that if they are assigned to our project then well they must be working on the project, right? Well maybe. But sometimes it's not so clear. Sometimes you just don’t have that warm, fuzzy feeling with someone and that pretty much is the point where today's interview with Margaret Meloni get started. From here, we will explore how such situations can occur. How line managers could be responsible for causing this kind of feeling in us project managers and we'll take a look at a few examples from Margaret's professional life. But most importantly, of course, we will look at what can be done to both avoid and then also deal with such situations. And now, are you really listening? Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Margaret Meloni, Community Leader at www.elearning4pms.com and www.pmstudent.com. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Margaret. Welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™! Margaret Meloni: Thank you. Great to be here as always! Cornelius Fichtner: Ah, I'm very happy to have you. So you have sent me a draft article that's going to be published in one of ezines in the coming weeks and listeners who listen to this in the year 2025, for them it will already be in the past. And this article is going to talk about whether or not resources on your projects are actually working and working for you and not working for someone else. Let's set the stage here. What is the takeaway going to be for our listeners here? Margaret Meloni: Sometimes you start a project and you’re not feeling comfortable as to whether or not the people who are showing up and smiling at you in status meetings, as to whether or not they really jumped in to the work yet and we're going to look at that situation and tackle it and see how do you know and what can you do about it, and how can you prevent this. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. So set this up a little bit more for me. So we have a team meeting and people are coming in and what's the problem that we are trying to solve right now? Margaret Meloni: Well, it's something like this and I'll just tell you right now. I know that this has happened to me and other people have to come with this as well. Say, it's the beginning of your project. It's definitely within the first month. You're doing a great job. You've already had the kickoff. You have people assigned to you and you are having them come in for, let's say, good weekly updates and you run high-quality good meetings. And there's at least, there's one resource who c

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: John Donohoe (http://de.linkedin.com/pub/john-donohoe/3/545/24b) is the Director of Project Management at Star Alliance, and portfolio management is his passion. He says that many corporations don’t fail when they are developing a strategic plan but instead, they fail in the execution of that plan. This is basically because executing strategy consists of two main components, which are doing the right projects and doing projects right. Once you have this down, then effective portfolio management enables companies to do the right projects by ensuring that all projects are aligned to the overall strategy. And this again means that Strategic PMOs (SPMOs) are quite well  positioned to do more than just ensuring that projects are done right. Instead they will also be able to maximize your corporate portfolio as well as provide the bridge between project demand and resource supply. This interview with John not only discusses this in detail, but we’ll also look at some best practices in regards to managing your project portfolio and we’ll talk about what we all can do to ensure strategic alignment of our projects in an organization where there are no PMOs that support us. John Donohoe has 30-plus years of experience developing IT systems in various roles.  He has lived in the US, Canada, Belgium, Tokyo and for more than 20 years has called Frankfurt, Germany home. As the Director of the Star Alliance PMO, he successfully implemented an Agile approach to complement the waterfall project management methodology.  Additionally he refreshed Star Alliance’s stage-gate and project governance processes. For the past two years his focus and passion has been helping Star Alliance better execute its strategy via portfolio management.  John takes a holistic view of executing strategy with the PMO as a key partner in the overall process. John Donohoe will be speaking on the topic of the SPMO and on April 28th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. So if you are listening to this interview before then, you can find out more at http://projectzonecongress.com/ 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 # 269. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you for joining us today. John Donohoe is the Director of Project Management at Star Alliance and portfolio management is his passion. He says that many corporations don’t fail when they are developing a strategic plan but instead they fail under the execution of that plan. This is basically because executing strategy consists of two main components which are doing the right projects and doing projects right. Once you have this down then effective portfolio management enables companies to do the right projects by ensuring that all projects are aligned to the overall strategy and this again means that strategic PMOs, SPMOs, are quite well positioned to do more than just ensuring that projects are done right. Instead, they will also be able to maximize your corporate portfolio, as well as provide the bridge between project demand and resource supply. This interview with John not only discusses this in detail but will also look at some best practices in regards to managing your project portfolio. And we'll talk about what you and I can do to ensure project alignment to the strategy in an organization where there are no PMOs that support us. And here's a little bit more about our interview guest today. John Donohoe has 30+ years of experience developing IT systems in various roles. He has lived in the US, Canada, Belgium, Tokyo and for more than 20 years has called Frankfurt, Germany his home. As the Director of the Star Alliance PMO, he successfully implemented an Agile approach to complement the Wa

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: Globalization and internationalization continue to change the diversity of businesses and our projects. Corporate structures mirror these trends. However, it seems that “diversity” mostly focuses on gender, age or origin. And diversification of employees is not the objective of diversity management. Roland Dumont du Voitel (http://www.amontis.com/ - http://de.linkedin.com/pub/dr-roland-dumont-du-voitel/14/9b7/567) says that there is much more to it. He says that building on diversity focused on individual talents and qualities changes both corporations and provides also higher levels of creativity. This applies even more to project structures than to corporations. In project management we see that diversity is not a goal in itself. Its importance comes from the tasks and objectives of the projects. Just think of the diversity you create with mergers, acquisitions, global software projects, or even offshoring of services. So hear Roland take a look at the pros and cons of applying diversity management in a mature project management environment, review its impact on culture and management, but also discuss the resistance to that change. Roland Dumont du Voitel will be speaking on the topic of the PMO and Capitalizing on Diversity on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. Find out more at http://projectzonecongress.com/ 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 # 266. This is the Project Management Podcast at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. Globalization and internationalization continue to change the diversity of businesses and our project's corporate structures, they mirror these trends. However, it seems that diversity mostly focuses on gender, age or origin. But diversification of employees is not the objective of diversity management. Roland Dumont du Voitel says that there is much more to it. He says that building on diversity focus on individual talents and qualities, changes both corporations and provides also higher level creativity. This applies even more to project structures than to corporations. In project management, we see that diversity is not a goal in itself. It's importance comes from the tasks and objectives of the projects. Just think of the diversity you create with mergers, acquisitions, global software projects, or even offshoring of services. So here, Roland take a look at the pros and cons of applying diversity management in a mature project management environment, review its impact on culture and management, but also discuss the resistance to that change. And by the way, Roland Dumont du Voitel will be speaking on the topic of PMO and Capitalizing on Diversity on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt, Germany. So if you are listening to this interview here before then, you can find out more at www.projectzonecongress.com. And now, enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Roland Dumont du Voitel, Managing Partner and CEO of www.amontis.com. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Roland and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™! Roland Dumont du Voitel: Good afternoon, Cornelius! Cornelius Fichtner: So you will be speaking at the upcoming Project Zone Congress and your topic is PMO and Capitalizing on Diversity. What is it about the topic of diversity and capitalizing on it that interests you? Roland Dumont du Voitel: From my belief, diversity is one element of intellectual capital or intellectual essence of a company. I think we cannot be global with an ethnocentric paradigm. So diversity is an asset and we're not really using it. We try to reduce it to a standard we're used to and just to include them into our everyday way we handle things, w

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: Today’s topic is not an easy one. Kevin Reilly, PMP, PMI-ACP (http://krpm-training.com/ - http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwreilly) and I are going to talk about failure. Failure on the PMP exam to be precise. But of course, just talking about failure is not interesting. So our approach is that we want to talk about the reasons why someone may have failed the PMP exam once, twice or maybe even three times, and then most importantly what actions one can take to recover, regroup and and begin moving forward to passing instead of failing the exam. And of course, this is the moment, when I self-servingly have to say that If you are a PM who wants to become PMP or PMI-ACP certified then the easiest way to do so is with our sister Podcasts The PM PrepCast or The Agile PrepCast and study for the exam by watching the in-depth exam prep video training from www.pm-prepcast.com. We cannot guarantee that you don’t fail, but we know that our training is effective and gets you there. 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 # 268. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Good to have you back. Today's topic is not an easy one. Kevin Reilly and I are going to talk about failure, failure on the PMP® Exam to be precise. Of course, just talking about failure is not interesting. So our approach is that we want to talk about the reasons why someone may have failed the PMP® Exam once, twice or may be even three times. And then more importantly, what actions can be taken to recover, regroup and begin moving forward to passing instead of failing the exam. And of course, this is the moment when I self-servingly have to say that if you are a project manager who wants to become PMP certified, then the easiest way to do so is with our sister Podcast, The PM PrepCast™ and study for the exam by watching the in-depth exam prep training from www.pm-prepcast.com. Of course, we cannot guarantee that you won't fail but we know that our training is effective and that it gets you there. And now, let us guide you towards success. Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Kevin Reilly, PMP, Senior Project Management Training Consultant for KRPM training Solutions. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Kevin and welcome back to the Podcast! Kevin Reilly: Hello, Cornelius! How are you doing today? Cornelius Fichtner: I am doing very well today. Thank you. The sun is shining in California. Kevin Reilly: Yes, it is. Cornelius Fichtner: As it should be. Kevin Reilly: Yes. Cornelius Fichtner: So the topic that we have today is not the easiest one. We want to delve into failing the PMP® Exam or rather what to do when you fail the PMP® Exam multiple times and how to recover from such failures. Now first question to you: We're both PMP trainers. This is what we do pretty much full time. In your view, has the PMP® Exam become more difficult with the release of the latest PMBOK® Guide edition? Kevin Reilly: Well actually, I have to say yes for a couple of reasons. You have to remember that PMI's Project Management Body of Knowledge is the current set of project manager in principles and best practices that PMI suggests that project managers use "on most projects most of the time" in order to ensure their project's successful completion. So if we look back, we're currently on the PMBOK 5th Edition. If we look back to the original edition of the PMBOK® Guide, the first edition which I believe was created in 1984 if I'm not mistaken; and it was less than a hundred pages I believe. So each edition since then contains a lot more information. So really by default the actual body of knowledge for project management is becoming greater and therefore the

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Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Earn 37 Professional Development Units: When it comes to identifying a reason for why so many projects fail then Bryan Barrow (http://nova-consulting.co.uk - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/bryanbarrow) has a simple answer for you. He says that a root cause of poor project delivery is poor planning. But he also says that this is not a failure of project management, but instead this is a failure of project leadership. So if poor planning is the culprit then there has to be a better way to plan our projects. Right? Right! Bryan is an advocate of planning your project with index cards. So in our interview we are going to first discuss what the problem is with planning your project using sticky notes, and then we’ll look at the benefits of index card planning for your project, in particular on improved leadership, greater financial control, improved project governance and improved cross-department team-working and collaboration. And by the way… Bryan Barrow will be speaking on the topic of Index Card Planning on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. So if you are listening to this interview before April 2014 you can find out more at http://projectzonecongress.com/ 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 # 264. This is the Project Management Podcast at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Nice to have you with us. When it comes to identifying a reason for why so many projects fail, then Bryan Barrow has a simple answer for you. He says that a root cause of poor project delivery is poor planning. But he also says that this is not a failure of project management but instead, this is a failure of project leadership. So if poor planning is the culprit, then there has to be a better way to plan our projects, right? Yes, right! Bryan is an advocate of planning your project with index cards. So in our interview, we are going to first discuss what the problem is with planning your project using sticky notes and then we'll look at the benefits of index card planning for your project in particular on improved leadership, greater financial control, improved project governance and improved cross-department team working and collaboration. And by the way, Bryan Barrow will be speaking on the topic of index card planning on April 29 at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt, Germany. So if you're listening to this interview before April of 2014, you can find out more at www.projectzonecongress.com. And now, let’s put all the cards on the table. Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Bryan Barrow, Project Management Consultant and Speaker. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Bryan! Welcome to The Project Management Podcast™! Bryan Barrow: Hi Cornelius. Thanks for having me. Cornelius Fichtner: You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us today here. We want to talk about how to plan your project using index cards. But before we go to the index cards, I think one of the main reasons why you came up with this approach is because the usual paper-based or post-it-based approach that people have for doing a planning workshop doesn’t really work all that well, does it? Bryan Barrow: No and it's not really to knock the use of post-it notes or sticky notes in planning because it is a very good approach mainly because it's collaborative. You're getting people in a room asking people for their ideas and contributions and trying to plan the project together. So far, so good but there are still some drawbacks. One of those being that quite often you rely on subject matter experts and the knowledge in their heads. Another one is a low-level of knowledge transfer. So you can get people in a room, get them to throw out their ideas but it doesn’t nece

Play Now: This video explains how to earn 30 Free PDUs from The PM Podcast. All you have to do is subscribe, listen and claim! Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. This video is an update of the information previously published in episodes 150 and 183. The videos of those episodes have been removed. 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 # 263. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Nice to have you with us. This video here is an update to our older Episodes #150 and #183 about earning PDUs because earning 30 free Category C PDUs from The Project Management Podcast™ is now simpler than it has ever been before. This is because PMI has made claiming these 30 free PDUs much easier. In order to get your 30 free PDUs, there are just 3 steps that you have to follow. First, you have to subscribe to The Project Management Podcast™. Second, you have to listen to at least 30 hours of our interviews. And third, you have to claim your 30 free Category C PDUs on the PMI® CCRS website. And that's really all there is to it. Let's look at the details of these 3 steps one by one. So first, you have to subscribe to The Project Management Podcast™. You can either subscribe for free or you can choose to get the premium subscription and support the Podcast financially. The big difference between these two is that the free subscription gives you access to the latest 15 episodes or so while the paid premium subscription gives you immediate access to all episodes. Plus you also get transcripts. If you want to subscribe for free, then just look for the words Subscribe Free or Free Subscription on the Podcast website and simply follow the instructions. You'll find subscription instructions for standard RSS feeds, android devices and also for iTunes. Another option you have to not to subscribe at all because you can hear all the free episodes directly on the websites. Just go to the episode that you want to hear, press play and start listening which takes us to the second step on how to earn your 30 free PDUs, listening. 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.