Summary: Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Earn 37 PDUs:: Cornelius Fichtner and Frank Saladis This interview with Frank Saladis was recorded at the 2015 PMI Global Congress in Orlando, Florida. We discuss his paper and presentation "The Indispensable Project Manager". Here is the paper's abstract: Managing projects effectively has become essential in every organization large or small. The uncertainties of the world business economy, rapidly changing technology, and the intensifying focus on sustainability has driven many organizations to develop specific methods for managing projects and to seek highly qualified people to manage those projects. These qualifications include the ability lead as well as to manage and create an environment of change readiness, attention to quality, and an awareness that self-development is a critical factor for success at both the personal and organizational level. Today’s project managers must adapt to change, lead diverse teams, act as ambassadors for their organizations, and deal with a multitude of challenging project stakeholders. They must also continually enhance their knowledge about business, working with people, and how to maintain a reputation of professionalism, thought leadership, and ability to add value. This paper addresses the importance of the professional project manager to any organization, and the need for the project manager to continually enhance existing skills, adapt to a changing business environment, and become a “go to” person in the organization. Emphasis is placed on understanding the needs of the organization, clearly and visibly creating value, and managing personal brand. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Welcome back to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida. This is the Project Management Podcast and we're coming to you live from the PMI 2015 Global Congress. With me is Frank Saladis. Hello, Frank. Frank Saladis: Hi, Cornelius, how are you? Cornelius Fichtner: I am doing very well. And before we do anything else, congratulations! You received an award. Yesterday evening, you are a - let's see, it's the PMI Distinguished Contribution Awards that you have received, right? Frank Saladis: That's right. That's what I received. Cornelius Fichtner: That is very nice. I am not worthy. I am not worthy. So you've been doing project management and giving to PMI for the past 2,500 years it seems. Frank Saladis: Yes, that's where it is. Yes, it is. Yes, exactly 2,500 years. Cornelius Fichtner: So congratulations on receiving that award. It's really nice to see. My first question to you is, looking into the future, what do you think 2016 is going to bring to project management? Frank Saladis: Well, you know, every year, some things change a little bit, you know, and I actually follow trends and things like that, so I can get up on what's going to happen. And one of the things you'll probably hear commonly is Agile will continue to grow. I think people are beginning to see not just in the software and IT field that there are techniques in Agile that can be adopted for or call more traditional projects. I think we'll see that. I see me personally because of what's going on in the world in the past several years and things is a lot more interesting, disaster recovery and business continuity. I think that and they are related to risk management. And I think that the general business population, the environment, probably hasn't really been paying enough attention to risk. You can see that so many companies are now being hacked. You know, we have security issues and so on. And maybe it's time to step up and see, you know, pay more attention to the risk factor. And although the disaste
