Episode 012: Goals

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The main focus of today's show is the continuation of what we started two weeks ago when we looked at an overview of what project management methodologies are. Today, I am giving you a high level overview of several of these methodologies. You'll also get to hear several new helpful resources and news items.

Project Management in the News
- APM: Project Management Awards 2005 Winners Announced (PDF Document)
- IPMA Celebrates 40th birthday
- India must emulate Chinese model in project management

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.

Cornelius Fichtner (00:10):

[inaudible] you are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at PM. podcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to PM This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 12. I am Cornelius fish. Now this is the project management podcast for the 19th of November, 2005. And today we'll be looking at goals why you need them and how to set them right as every week to start out the show, a few announcements and things I want to get off my chest. Let me start out with the listener survey. If you listen, and like the project management podcast, then I would appreciate to hear your feedback. I have put a link onto my blog, which will take you to the listener survey, and I would very much appreciate it. If you would take three minutes out of your time and answer 10 questions for me, there are point and click questions.

Cornelius Fichtner (01:22):

It shouldn't take you really more than three minutes with those 10 questions, I will be able to get to know my listenership a little bit better, and I will be able to focus more on what you want and improve the quality of the program here and now a word from our sponsor. This episode of the project management podcast is sponsored by project load. Project load is a web based project management and time tracking tool, project load lets teams maintain and forecast their own tasks helps project managers track their projects, gives PMOs one place to view all projects and provides executives, valuable insight into exactly where their organization is spending their time. You can find project This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. next, a couple of followups from last week show. First of all, there is Harry Fisher. If you listened to last week's show you would've heard the piece from Harry Fisher about workflow.

Cornelius Fichtner (02:27):

And he tells me that the article on which he based that particular piece, that was his article. Um, I said it would, wasn't published in the ASQ quality project magazine. That is of course the ASQ quality progress magazine. Well, yeah, that's an easy mistake for a project manager to make. And he also wanted me to mention that he is currently the quality assurance manager for Whitman heart interactive. I also got some feedback from Ethan Johnson, who is the man behind the vision thing, the podcast, or other the episode of the podcast, which I reviewed last week. Ethan left a comment on my blog and he obviously wasn't all too happy about the fact that I called the audio quality bad. Ethan would have preferred the word crunk. Well, the segment is called the good, the bad and the ugly. And if you remember, I believe I called the content very good.

Cornelius Fichtner (03:36):

And I called the audio quality bad. And I am sticking to that. I still think that the audio quality of that particular episode was bad, but the quality of the content was excellent. If you want to read his full response, you can go to the blog where he left his comment. And then we also have some reader feedback here. This one comes from a Nigel Jones and he writes, hi, Cornelius, I'm Nigel Jones. And I am based in the UK in Scotland. Actually I have recently found your podcast and have been listening on my daily jog with my iPod. So we have somebody who jogs to it. We have somebody who does his morning exercises with it. It seems to be a popular sports pots podcast here. He continues. I have to keep extending my wrongs as the PM podcast seems to be getting longer and longer.

Cornelius Fichtner (04:36):

I think I'm up to your 10th podcast now, and I really liked them. Good content and easy listening. And I can tell that you give an honest opinion when you comment on and critique something, keep up the good work. Thank you very much, Nigel. And I really hope that at some point, you're going to have to run a marathon here to listen to my show in its entirety. I will try and keep it between 30 minutes and an hour in the future. No worries there. And those are about all the announcements and things I wanted to get off my chest today. Today's show marks the start of a new segment called helpful resources. When I come across good articles or presentations or white papers or whatever, I deem a helpful resource. I am going to mention it here on the show. And today I have four resources for you.

Cornelius Fichtner (05:49):

The first helpful resource is a article, which I have found in the computer world, Canada. And it's actually an older one and it's from the year 2002, but, uh, it still has value. It is titled, there is a reason why IT PMOs fail and it was written by Ken Handley. And the reason why I mentioned it as simple, because he more or less repeats what I said in my show about PMOs, a few shows back. He says that the trick to make a PMO successful is giving the people who are actually doing the project tools that work, do that. And the project team will beat a path to the PMO door exactly what I'm saying, make it helpful to people, and they will come to you. The next helpful resource is entitled next generation PMO. If you build it, will they come?

Cornelius Fichtner (06:57):

And this is a presentation in PDF form by Jack Doggle from the project ties group. And, uh, in it, uh, slide number 10. He has an overview between traditional PMOs and next generation PMOs. And this is actually the one thing that I find very interesting here. So go on, read this a PDF document and particularly focused on slide number 10, to see the difference between a traditional PMO and what he calls a next generation PMO. The third and final article here about PMOs is entitled top 10 tips to building an effective program management office, follow the steps, steps to ensure your PMOs success. This is written by Steven C. Howald, and he writes this on the chief project officer website that is chief project officer.com. And it's quite a interesting article. It's very well written. You won't find much here that you haven't read in other articles that talk about the top 10 tips to building an effective program management office.

Cornelius Fichtner (08:17):

But I find that it's very crisply written and a good resource for all of us who work in PMOs. And finally, what I have found here is a free 26 project managers desk reference. Yes. And what could be better as a helpful resource than a project manager's desk reference. This is forum 4:00 PM. You can find them at fourpm.com and, uh, well, unfortunately I haven't actually been able to look at it because it is a PDF document, obviously 26 pages long, but it requires Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or later. And I have been so lazy with installing Acrobat readers on my system that I still have 5.0. And, uh, well, um, I hope it's a good reference that I'm giving you here folks. So those of you who go and check it out, please drop me a line and tell me if this was worth putting in the helpful references section here. Again, you will find links to these helpful resources on my blog, and now let's move right on to the news in project management of this week.

Cornelius Fichtner (09:45):

First news item this week is from Friday, the 18th of November, 2005. And this is about a birthday. So I'm going to have to sing. Now, [inaudible] Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear IPMA happy birthday to you. And now, you know why I talk in front of the microphone and not sing? Yes, the IP M a D international project management association has celebrated its 40th anniversary. And as you may remember, they're currently having a Congress in new Delhi, and this is where they did it. Here's a little bit of a history that they mentioned about the IPMA in 1965, a few project management, enthusiastic in the heart of Europe joined together and started a discussion group of managers of international projects. The first international Congress was held in 1967 in Vienna with participation from 30 different countries. The group developed from the discussion group to an organization, which was for years known as internet time changed. And in 1994, internet became the international project management association. So once again, happy birthday. IPMA

Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.