Summary: Play Now: Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep : Sara Gallagher and Cornelius Fichtner The ink isn't even dry on your charter, but what if the seeds of project destruction have already been sown? The odds are not in our favor. The Project Management Institute (PMI)® reports that nearly 15% of projects are deemed failures. After years of helping companies "unstick" troubled projects, our guest knows that the first 21 days are critical to success. Learn how you can leverage them to beat the odds! This interview with Sara Gallagher (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the connecting Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California. We look at the most common mistakes that project managers make in the first 21 days, how to correct them, and learn about critical but often overlooked objectives that must be achieved early related to project framing and team infrastructure. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, you’ll learn how to maximize your project’s first 21 days and avoid some of the common startup mistakes. Hello and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I’m Cornelius Fichtner. Podcast Interview Cornelius Fichtner: We are coming to you live from the connecting 2018 PMI Global Conference in Los Angeles, California. And with me right now is Sara Gallagher. Sara Gallagher: Hello! Cornelius Fichtner: Good afternoon and welcome back! Sara Gallagher: Thank you so much! Cornelius Fichtner: This is our second conference interview. Sara Gallagher: It is, yes! Cornelius Fichtner: Will you be presenting next year? Sara Gallagher: I hope so. Cornelius Fichtner: Oh good! Sara Gallagher: I hope to present every year because it is such a fun experience to come back year after year and see some of the same people over and over again. Cornelius Fichtner: What do you get out of it? Sara Gallagher: I get a lot. Number one, I obviously get the PDUs that everybody else gets, right? But more importantly, I always leave everyday of the conference with at least a couple of a-ha moments, something that just makes me think about my own project management practice in a new way. And I always leave with new friends. Cornelius Fichtner: The adjective that I used were coming to you live from the connecting 2018 Global Conference, that adjective is from you. Tell me why do you choose “connective”? Sara Gallagher: When I come to the PMI conference, I always feel that I make really meaningful professional relationships but also friends, you know. People from allover the world. I meet people from different industries. I meet fellow consultants who it’s always so fun to chat with about how they approach their work, how you help people solve their project problems. I just love it! Cornelius Fichtner: And to everybody out there who is not here, that’s what you are missing. Your presentation is called “Win the battle before it begins. How to maximize the first 21 days.” Why 21 days and is it business days or are we actually talking three weeks, calendar weeks? Sara Gallagher: So the number 21 has a special significance to me. It’s the story that I open a presentation with. It is an arbitrary number. What I’m really talking about is the first, let’s say, 10% of whatever your project link is, which is when you are building trust with the team, when you are scoping out your project, you are framing it up. You are making sure everyone understands the “why” of the project that you are doing. So for long projects, that might be more like 45 days. For short projects, I used a length of let’s say about a year. So 21 days is kind of how I arrived at that number. But for me the story comes from the very first project that I ever managed. Cornelius Fichtner: Oh okay! You mentioned it. We have to follow up
