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Dev Ramcharan, PMP, CSM, CCTC

If you are listening to this podcast, then you are most likely either someone who wants to start a career in project management or you are already working in the project management field and you want to advance in your career. Well… you have come to the right place. This is the first of three interviews that will help you optimize and boost your project management career.

My guest is Dev Ramcharan (LinkedIn Profile). Dev is not only a PMP certified project manager, but he is also a professional career coach with AROUCA Career Coaching in Canada. That means he not only understands the profession of project management but he also has the coaching background to guide you and me into successful project management careers! And my oh my is he good!

We have recorded three interviews and each focuses on one stage of your career. The stages are early career, mid career and late career. My recommendation is that you listen to all three interviews in sequence, irrespective of your current career stage. So no matter if you are an absolute newcomer to project management or if you are a highly respected and senior VP of project management… you should listen to all three interviews starting with this one here.

Also, Dev has developed the Career Optimization Package for you. This package is just over 30 pages long and contains templates, workbooks, tools and plans to help you review, optimize, plan and boost your project management career. You can download this package for free in both PDF and Microsoft Office format from The PM Podcast website. Just go to www.pm-podcast.com/career. You’ll see that there is a 32 page long free version (that’s the one we talk about during the interview) and there is also a premium version.

And with all that out the way here's an overview of our first interview with Dev Ramcharan: We start out by looking at the benefits that a career in project management gives you, discuss the key factors and skills that will help you make your project management career a success, then we move on to discussing how to optimize your early career and we close the interview by looking at how to use the Career Optimization Package.

Note: During the interview I say that the free package is about 50 pages long, but the correct number is 32 pages. I'm sorry! I was looking at the wrong file. My mistake!

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This is a quick "Good News Announcement" for The Project Management Podcast.

In a nutshell, here is what has been happening and what the very near future holds

• We have updated our website. It is now much more mobile friendly, uses a modern template and is easier to navigate. Come take a look at https://www.project-management-podcast.com/
• We reduced price for our Premium Career Optimization package to $6.99. Take a look at the Premium package here and see how it will help you to improve your career as a PM.
• Lastly, Cornelius is getting ready to record new interviews for you. Six guests are currently lined up. Additionally, you can also look forward to a new PDU mini-series to help you better understand the ins and outs of earning professional development units.

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Todd Williams

When project budgets are dwindling, deadlines passing, and tempers flaring, then the usual response is to browbeat the project team and point fingers of blame - usually toward the project manager. That’s not really all that helpful. For these situations, what is needed is an objective process for accurately assessing what is wrong and a clear plan of action for fixing the problem.

Enter Todd Williams, PMP who wrote the book Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure. Todd and I sat down at the PMI® Global Congress last year and in this interview we discuss approaches to project rescue.

Here’s a brief book overview of Todd’s book: Rescue the Problem Project provides project managers, executives, and customers with the answers they require. Turnaround specialist Todd Williams has worked with dozens of companies in multiple industries resuscitating failing projects. In this new book, he reveals an in-depth, start-to-finish process.

As always when we have an author discussing his book we are giving away two copies and by now you should know how that works. One copy is reserved for our premium listeners and one for everyone else. If you want a chance of winning the book, please go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the book giveaway announcement. All you have to do is leave a comment.

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We are reposting Episode 205 with Todd C. Williams today.

This is because we have just learned that Todd's book Rescue the Problem Project jumped to become the #1 Best Seller in Amazon’s Business Project Management books. Also... it's currently available for just $3.99 on kindle.

That's a great deal for a book that has a 4.5 star rating! Get it today before the price goes up.

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Agata Czopek and Cornelius Fichtner

In this interview we welcome Agata Czopek (LinkedIn Profile) and discuss that diversity is a fact and inclusion is a choice.

Companies with diverse executive teams are 21% more likely to outperform the companies rated in the bottom quartile of diversity. Have you ever experienced a situation that made you feel uncomfortable? Let’s discover the attributes of an inclusive leader and the steps needed to improve team performance by addressing unconscious bias.

This interview was recorded ad the crowded Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California. We learn to describe attributes of an inclusive leader, identify techniques to improve performance by addressing the unconscious bias, and see that privilege is invisible for those who have it.

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Good news for all listeners of The Free PM Podcast out there: Your favorite business podcast is now available on Spotify! This means that if you hold a certification from Project Management Institute (PMI)® then you can start earning your PDUs right where you listen to your favorite music.

Note: If you have a paid subscription to The Premium PM Podcast then nothing changes for you because Spotify only accepts free podcasts.

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Karthik Ramamurthy, Sripriya Narayanasamy and Cornelius Fichtner

In this interview we welcome Sripriya Narayanasamy (LinkedIn Profile) and Karthik Ramamurthy (LinkedIn Profile) who are the authors of the book Say Yes to Project Success. in 52 short and entertaining chapters the book gives actionable advice to project managers on the most common issues we are faced with on pretty much every project.

This interview was recorded ad the hectic and fantastic Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

Here is the book's abstract

We have chosen 4 chapters from the book ("Great Catches", "Last Mile Connectivity", "Fun with Risks", and "Feed me a Sandwich") in order to review them together.

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Kevin Wozniak and Cornelius Fichtner

Got Meetings?

This interview focuses on effective meeting management. It covers one of the project management basics that is most difficult to handle - managing stakeholders using different combinations of direct, dotted line, and influential management.

This interview with Kevin Wozniak was recorded at the creative Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California, as part of our leadership podcasts series.

In the interview we demonstrate how to effectively lead meetings and manage participants using various management styles and explain how to actively engage meeting attendees to participate in meetings in a valuable manner.

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Douglas Knutzen and Cornelius Fichtner

What if you had to do your project in (near) half the time as previous projects, or be fired? What if your customer required you to do their project in (near) half the time to which you are accustomed or lose the business?

Hear about the techniques (that can be applied to almost any type of project) that helped to meet these challenges and got the products successfully to market in record time.

This interview with Douglas Knutzen was recorded at the inspirational Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

You'll hear about how to leverage scheduling, execution, project planning meetings and team techniques to significantly increase speed on your projects, and (almost more importantly) how to lead project teams in high-pressure situations.

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Eleonore Pieper and Cornelius Fichtner

Successful projects result in change. However, this transformation usually happens when the original project team is already disbanding, leaving the process largely unmanaged and stakeholders ill-equipped to use the deliverables as they were intended, diminishing the expected project impact and benefits.

In this interview, we explore five strategies that project managers can easily incorporate into their project plans to put in place preventative and mitigation strategies that will lead to improved adoption of project results.

This interview with Eleonore Pieper (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the diverse Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

We look at a scalable model of five strategies for change and discuss how to modify plans with specific tasks in the areas of communication, training, organizational design, sponsorship and HR management to ensure successful post-project transformation.

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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.

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Andy Burns and Cornelius Fichtner

Slow PMO?

In today’s “right now” business environment, “hurry up and wait” annual planning cycles won’t do! To be fit for purpose, PMO processes deliver value faster than the competition—continuously, and certainly not just annually. Lean agility delivers this winning velocity! Here's a diet to help lean out an overweight PMO.

Transforming the heritage PMO takes insight, empiricism, and experience. If your organization uses agile project management as well as traditional (or 'heritage') ways of getting work done, then you are bound to get some good insights from this episode.

This interview with Andy Burns (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the encouraging Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

The experience shared in this interview should inform those needing to deliver fast—before the competition! We compare and contrast the practices of the heritage PMO and the lean-agile PMO and illustrate a technique to tailor the PMO process for organizations wanting to adopt agile project portfolio management.

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Benjamin Anyacho and Cornelius Fichtner

By 2029, 76 million baby boomers will retire. And organizations, including yours, are losing knowledgeable employees due to retirement and a competitive labor market.

With 50% employee turnover in 2016, this brain drain of historical proportions increases our vulnerability to loss of institutional knowledge and critical skill sets required to conduct our business. In this interview, we explore the trends, urgency, value, techniques, and how-to of knowledge management — the new competitive and comparative advantage for high performing organizations.

This interview with Benjamin Anyacho (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the superb Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

In the interview we also discuss strategies for creating a knowledge management culture in your business environment and how to develop knowledgeable project teams.

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Kim Wasson and Cornelius Fichtner

It's hard to juggle everything on your project. And just a glance at your company's project management methodology can make you despair about getting it all done.

But if we take a page from agile development, adding tools from behavioral psychology to Pomodoro, and incorporating pragmatic prioritization, you’ll be able to build a personalized time management system that fits your own working style. Come out of this interview with a manageable system for yourself and the tools to help your team members manage their own time and priorities.

This interview with Kim Wasson (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the exciting Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

In the interview we review the key components of a good time/priority management system, the smorgasbord of tools available, and we discuss how to create a tailored time management system and advise team members on ways to manage their time and priorities.

Oh... also... below is an image of the time management system that got Cornelius so excited during the recording:

Using a folder for task management

So whether you are trying to find more time to do risk management in agile projects, or you want to reclaim some time for professional development, exam prep, stakeholder engagement or something else, let's dive into this episode so you can pick up some new time management techniques.

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Marie Spark and Cornelius Fichtner

Do you want to take your career as a project manager to the next level?

Yes?

We have a suggestion for you: project management education.

This interview with Marie Spark (LinkedIn Profile) was recorded at the energizing Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Well... Actually... it was recorded a couple days before at the PMI® LIM).

In the interview, we see how adult education has changed in the past decade, what changes we can expect in the future, and how we project managers can (and should!) take advantage of various training opportunities in order to advance our careers.

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview and transcript...

Hussain Bandukwala, PMO Coach

If you are setting up a PMO for your company, then no matter what industry you are in, having the right PMO tools at our disposal can make a significant difference. And as they relate to the PMO, tools are the moment when you shift your focus from management to administration.

In fact, we project managers and program managers may even find ourselves scrambling around to find not only relevant but also accurate information to update our statuses, while resource managers may have to connect with several people to determine if they efficiently staffed their resources and have sufficient capacity for the upcoming initiatives.

And these are just some some of the reasons why our PMOs need the right tools. But what are the right tools and how do we identify them? And why on earth did we end up using this tool over here which is clearly wrong for our PMO?

All of those questions and also ‘Why are the right tools so important?’ is what we we are going to discuss today with Hussain Bandukwala (LinkedIn Profile).

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The PMI Global Conference in Los Angeles covered all kinds of project management topics, from technical and leadership presentations, to expert thoughts on agile project management and everything in between. Here is a quick video overview of what it was like to be at the event.

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Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam training :

Hussain Bandukwala, PMO Coach

Is your company thinking about setting up a PMO and nobody, not even you, have the experience to do it? If you can't ask the right project planning questions, how can you create a successful PMO?

That is not a problem.

Our guest today is Hussain Bandukwala (LinkedIn Profile). He is the organizer of the PMO Virtual Summit and PMOs are his passion. He writes and speaks about them. And in one of his articles he says that even if you’ve never done it before you can still set up a PMO in 100 days.

We discuss how realistic this is, what skills a PMO leader needs, the mindset needed to do this in 100 days, and then we’ll take you phase by phase through the process of setting up your very own PMO in 100 days, so you can create a project plan to do it in your own organization. Oh, and if you need a helping hand to get started, I have recommendations for a project plan template so your PMO plans can begin straight away.

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A quick announcement and call to action to sign up for The PMO Virtual Summit at www.pmovirtualsummit.com

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For Project Management Professional (PMP)® Students: PMP Exam Prep :

All interview guests

Last year at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Congress 2017 in Chicago, Illinois I recorded about a dozen interviews. They have all been published over the past year and you've probably heard some or all of them. But what you don't know is what happened once each interview was complete.

I pressed the recording button one more time and asked each of my guests the following question: What business management skills are essential for today’s project manager if they want to become more and more involved in strategic projects for their organizations?

And today you are going to get all the answers. In one nice mashup. Here are all the presenters in the order you will hear their answers

• Andy Kaufmann
• Betsy Stockdale
• Laszlo Retfalvi
• Justin Fraser
• Jen Pfaff
• Sarah Gallagher
• Kim Wasson
• Darryl Hahn
• Jeff Kissinger
• Niraj Kumar

Oh, and spoiler alert... the answer that I received most often was "Flexibility".