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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.

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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™, we welcome Oliver Lehmann to talk about Project Business and Project Business Management.

Hello and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. This is Episode 447 and I’m Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you for being here.

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. I had no idea myself what any of these terms meant when I heard them for the first time. But now I do, thanks to Oliver Lehmann.

Oliver wrote a 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 at www.project-business.org and he is on the program today to give us an introduction to project business and project business management.

You will learn what project business is all about that surprised roughly 50 percent of all the projects that are currently being undertaken in the world are part of project business. Yes, you heard that right, 50 percent. We also talk about the skills that we project managers needs to answer project business challenges and you’ll come our way learning about the number one thing that you should pay particular attention to when you are involved in project business management and why.

And since we are talking about project business today, allow me to remind you that I not only offer project management training for individuals but also for corporations, for businesses. So if you are looking to provide project management training for your company, then please visit www.pm-podcast.com/corporate to see what I offer. Let’s talk.

And now, enjoy the interview.

Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner: Hallo, Oliver! Herzlich willkommen zurück on Project Management Podcast.

Oliver Lehmann: Hallo, Cornelius!

Cornelius Fichtner: Yes, as always when I have Oliver Lehmann on the line, we start this in German and everybody freaks out and then we switch over to English. Hello, Oliver! Welcome back!

Oliver Lehmann: Yeah, your Swiss-German is well, you speak good German.

Cornelius Fichtner: Well, I’m not going to go there.

Oliver Lehmann: Oh yeah!

Cornelius Fichtner: I’m doing well, thank you. All this COVID-19 craziness that’s going around the world unfortunately.

Oliver Lehmann: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cornelius Fichtner: So before we begin, what can our listeners expect to learn from our discussion today that will help them manage and lead their projects?

Oliver Lehmann: Let’s split your listeners into groups. One group is people who work as contractors, maybe freelancers for customers or they work as employees of a contractor company, manage projects, or paying customers. I think what they will learn will be slightly different to what those will learn on the other side who do customer side, the same projects, customer side; who work on the customer side and who have to manage suppliers and not just one or two suppliers possibly, but often complex supply networks with maybe hundreds of organizations and what can they learn?

They can learn because both of them to look at the business aspect on project management as well, and not so much business aspect meaning projects supporting a business but projects being the business, and the project becomes the business, and they have to look at other things than an internal project management would look at.

Another thing we’ll talk about will be education of project managers. Project business management means they need to fund education and that’s one of our biggest shortcomings at the moment. We don’t have enough education for that.

Also a term that I like very much here is business acumen. We will talk about business acumen, rarely talked about in project management.

Cornelius Fichtner: Let’s go back to the basics. Let us start with the term “project business.” Project business, how do you define it?

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.