The Project Management Podcast™

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If you are like most project managers out there, then you are likely managing more than one project. You have more than one ball in the air. You are juggling.

That means you will have to divide your attention between multiple projects. Keeping an eye on each of the balls as they are flying through the air. Experience helps. Both with keeping three balls in the air and also with making sure you successfully complete all of the projects you are assigned to.

Well... you have come to the right place because over the last decade, I have published 458 episodes here on The PM Podcast, and most of them qualify for free PMI PDUs.

In this recording of a live stream we are joined by Elizabeth Harrin soon launches a new course on Mastering Multiple Projects. And we are picking her brain today for tips, tricks, and good practices.

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This is the audio only version of Episode 459

Click here to view the video

If you are like most project managers out there, then you are likely managing more than one project. You have more than one ball in the air. You are juggling.

That means you will have to divide your attention between multiple projects. Keeping an eye on each of the balls as they are flying through the air. Experience helps. Both with keeping three balls in the air and also with making sure you successfully complete all of the projects you are assigned to.

Well... you have come to the right place because over the last decade, I have published 458 episodes here on The PM Podcast, and most of them qualify for free PMI PDUs.

In this recording of a live stream we are joined by Elizabeth Harrin soon launches a new course on Mastering Multiple Projects. And we are picking her brain today for tips, tricks, and good practices.

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If you are a certified project manager, and - in particular - if you hold a certification from The Project Management Institute (PMI)® then you know that your certification has to be renewed every three years. The process is quite simple:

1. After you are certified you have to earn a specified number of professional development units (PDUs)
2. If you are a Project Management Professional (PMP)® the number is 60, and for a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® it's 30
3. You'll have to report your PDUs with PMI® and at the end of the three years you pay the renewal fee, which starts the next 3-year cycle for you to earn the next set of PDUs

But... where do you find those PDUs? And how do you find free PDUs?

Well... you have come to the right place because over the last decade, I have published 458 episodes here on The PM Podcast, and most of them qualify for free PMI PDUs.

So here is the recording of a recent live stream where I presented how to earn PDUs from this very podcast. As always, with lots of questions from the audience.

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The Project Management Professional (PMP)® exam is not an easy exam. It is an advanced, experience-based exam that you can only take if you can successfully show that you meet all the requirements.

And the requirement that most candidates have a hard time with is the need to show at least 4,500 (in some cases even 7,500) hours of leading and directing projects. Even though candidates know all of their projects and how many hours they have worked on, they find it difficult to quickly identify if their experience hours actually count.

In this episode, Cornelius Fichtner helps you answer the question Do I Qualify for the PMP® Exam? by walking you through this simple, five-step process:

1. Know the definition of "Project Manager"
2. Download the PMP Handbook
3. Make a list of your projects
4. Download the PMP Exam Content Outline (ECO)
5. Bring it all together

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If you are preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® exam then you have come to the right place. In this episode, Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, CSM answers about 40 questions during a live stream. (Our apologies that the audio and video are slightly out of sync during the first and last minute of the recording.)

The PMP® Exam is changing. A new Exam Content Outline (ECO) was published in 2019 and it will go into effect on January 02, 2021.

And if you are thinking about taking and passing your exam in 2021 then you may have lots of questions about this changeover. Watch this video to get your answer. And if your question wasn't answered, then please ask in the comments below. We'll answer you here.

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If you have a Project Management Institute (PMI)® certification like the Project Management Professional (PMP)®, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®, or even the Certified Associate in Project management (CAPM)® then your certification is only good for three years. During these three years you have to earn 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) through training or other approved activities. And once you have those 60 PDUs, then you can renew the certification for another three years. And this cycle of earning PDUs and renewing continues for as long as you want to keep your PMP status.

There are many ways in which you can earn PDUs. Taking a training, reading a book or giving a presentation are just three options you have. So you could simply jump head in first and sign up for whatever training comes across your path. But having a plan and a process for doing this is a much better idea.

And that's what this episode is all about. I'm going to give you a 10-step process that you can follow in order to earn your PDUs with purpose and make your life easier. It's a recording of a live streaming event that I gave a few days ago. It was a very lively event with quite a few questions coming in.

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A few weeks ago, Cornelius Fichtner was interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver Lehmann of the Project Business Foundation about his career as a project manager, project leader and experience in project business management. This is part 2 of the interview, and here is the announcement:

For many practitioners in project management, Cornelius Fichtner is a household name. He is known mostly for the digital offerings of his company OSP International LLC, such as the PM PrepCast for project managers heading for the PMP® certification of PMI®, the Project Management Institute.

Meanwhile, his lineup of exam preparation tools was expanded by a family of further podcasts, augmented with simulators and inhouse offerings for corporations.

Much less known are his personal roots in project management and particularly in project business management.

Interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver F. Lehmann, he will tell us the most interesting stories of his years as a consultant and project manager under contract, working hard to make the customer happy, but also with the obligation to make the project profitable.

Play Now:

A few weeks ago, Cornelius Fichtner was interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver Lehmann of the Project Business Foundation about his career as a project manager, project leader and experience in project business management. Here is the announcement:

For many practitioners in project management, Cornelius Fichtner is a household name. He is known mostly for the digital offerings of his company OSP International LLC, such as the PM PrepCast for project managers heading for the PMP® certification of PMI®, the Project Management Institute.

Meanwhile, his lineup of exam preparation tools was expanded by a family of further podcasts, augmented with simulators and inhouse offerings for corporations.

Much less known are his personal roots in project management and particularly in project business management.

Interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver F. Lehmann, he will tell us the most interesting stories of his years as a consultant and project manager under contract, working hard to make the customer happy, but also with the obligation to make the project profitable.

Andrew Kallman, Executive Coach

In the previous episode, Andrew Kallman gave us an introduction to the concept of Flow from the book that he and his brother wrote.

And today, we are going to open up the book - which is called Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It - and we are going to look at chapter two more closely. This chapter discusses "Vision" and how that relates to the flow concept.

Some of the topics you'll hear about are prioritization, aha moments, leadership, how flow can be used in scaling of Agile, the importance of trust in the process, and of course, there is always my favorite question at the end of the interview: How can we apply all of this on our projects today?

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Andrew Kallman, Executive Coach

Last week, I must have missed the start of at least three scheduled meetings. In each case, I saw on my calendar that the meetings would start in an hour or less, which meant that I could probably start and finish another task before I had to be at those meetings. And each time, I got so involved in the task I was working on that I lost track of everything around me and the meetings started without me.

In positive psychology, this is called a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone. This is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.

Wouldn’t it be great, if we could apply this to all our projects and everyone working on it? You can.

To see how flow can be applied to our projects, we are welcoming Andrew Kallman to the program. He and his brother Ted Kallman wrote the book Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It and Andrew is here today to give us an introduction.

Here is how someone describes the effect flow has had on their projects: Flow is when you know where you are headed, know what your goal is, and know the steps necessary to get there. It's like running a race. You don't plan each step along the way, but you keep your eyes on the finish line, and everything you do moves you toward it thanks to your training.

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The views expressed by Shyam Ramanathan in this interview are his own and not those of his employer

Shyam Ramanathan, PMP, CSSGB, AINS, AU

We live in troubling times. We are facing a global pandemic with many of us following stay-at-home orders, and we see civil and political unrest erupting. There are some political leaders who are stepping up to the challenge, and others not so much.

But what about us project leaders? What can we do to help our project teams, colleagues, organizations and even our social circles face these challenges?

I have invited Shyam Ramanathan to the program today and discuss leadership during crisis and turbulence. Here is what Shyam writes:

In times of crisis like this, we look to leaders for inspiration, hope, and direction. The last word is the key as the first thing to suffer in a crisis is direction. Leaders have a guiding vision for the future and turn to hope when others can only see mud. Let’s hope in this time of enormous crisis it also unearths true leaders who can navigate the turbulent times and move us into a greater future however distant that may seem at this time.

These are the opening words of his article 27 Traits of Strong Leaders in Times of Crisis and Turbulence that we explore in this interview.

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld of Adeaca are back on the program today to discuss project business from the corporate perspective.

As a reminder, if your company’s products and services are delivered to your clients through projects, then your company is a project business. If we compare this to another industry, then a company that sells consumer goods is a retail business.

In this premium interview, we are going to be discussing the 7 challenges of a project business:

1. Acceptance of Status Quo
2. Failing to identify as a Project Business
3. Optimization of Project Management silos has maxed out
4. Inadequate communication among key stakeholders or “Lack of stakeholder collaboration”
5. Lack of governance/Lack a structured, standardized system of organizing their data
6. Lack of automation
7. Lack of real-time insight

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Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld

What type of project are you currently working on? Is it an internal project, where your own company pays for everything or is it an external project, where an external customer pays your bills? If you are part of the second group, then your project falls into what we call project business.

And now look at your company and the projects you deliver as a whole. Do you see mostly internal projects or external projects? Well… If your company’s products and services are delivered to your clients through projects, your company is a project business.

That means that the term project business is used to classify both individual projects and organizations as a whole. Both are project business. Confused? We can help.

Today we welcome Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld of Adeaca to look at the term project business from the perspective of a company.

In our conversation, we define the term project business from that angle, we discuss the central characteristics of a project business, briefly talk about some challenges, and look at why productivity in project business is lagging behind other areas like manufacturing or retail.

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James Franklin, PMP

Every project that you have ever worked on had at least one constraint. Maybe your current project has a fixed budget and maybe the previous one had to be completed by a certain deadline. But I am also sure of this: your projects had to follow laws and regulations.

The laws you have to follow can be major laws, like Sarbanes-Oxley here in the USA, the protection of personal data laws in the european union, or the intellectual property laws that most countries around the world have. And if you work in aerospace or healthcare then you will know all about rules and regulations concerning personal safety. But on the other hand these must-follow laws and regulations could simply be an internal regulation that tells you that all rental cars must be rented from one particular company.

So laws and regulations limit our choices and freedom to shape our projects.

And to explore this in more detail, we have Jim Franklin with us today. He has managed over $500M of Government contracts in California and knows a thing or two about laws and regulations.

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Oliver F. Lehmann, PMP

Today we are going to talk about Project Business and Project Business Management, and if you have no idea what that means then welcome to the club. Cornelius didn't know what either of these terms meant when he heard them for the first time.

But now he does. Thanks to Oliver F. Lehmann.

Oliver wrote the defining book on the topic called Project Business Management (Best Practices in Portfolio, Program, and Project Management). In addition to that, he also founded the Project Business Foundation, and he is our guest today to give us an introduction to project business and project business management.

You will learn what project business is all about, that (surprise!) roughly 50% of all projects that are currently being undertaken in the world are part of project business, we talk about the skills that we PMs need to answer project business challenges, and you’ll come away learning about the number one thing that you should pay particular attention to, when you are involved in project business management and why.