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Studyng for your Project Management Professional (PMP)®? Put PMP training in your pocket!

Andrew Burns and Cornelius Fichtner

Agile began with the promise to make smaller project teams more able to react to ever changing customer requirements. Scrum project management teaches us how to make that happen and how to work in flexible, agile ways to deliver what the customer wants. But what if your project is big? I mean really, really big. Can we have scaled agile?

This interview about Scaling Agile with Andrew Burns, PMI-ACP, PMP, was recorded at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Congress 2016 in San Diego, California. We discuss his paper and presentation Dragon Scales: 50 Teams Scrumming -- Implementing Adaptive Project Management Practices at Scale. Here is the abstract:

Product portfolios can easily scale to 50 teams or more in meeting large organizations’ needs. Large portfolios with strong foundations are derived through values-based leadership. The technique links corporate and individual values to scientific principles. Scientific principles inform us that change is constant and therefore adaptation defines good practices. Values-based leadership’s agile practices take root, thrive, and adapt at the pace of business change.

The three-hundred software engineers considered herein innovated within a portfolio of 18,000 colleagues. Their agile, adaptive product development practices continue to evolve from plan-driven provenance. Leveraging agile practices at the portfolio, program, and project level continually unleashes innovation, quality, and throughput of value. Though contextualized in terms of software product development in the 2010s with Scrum, the message of innovation through values-based adoption of scientific principles is timeless and framework unallied. Implementation of practices observant of values and principles endures as a way to deliver the best products regardless of toolset.

Agile project management is a growing domain, especially agile project management with scrum. It is possible to scale this approch, as frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) show us. The role of project manager in SAFe Agile can be critical. Scrum agile project management training can help if you want to learn how to scale, but meanwhile, Andrew's interview makes a fantastic starting point to learn more about scaling scrum to fit your organization.

Click to download the white paper

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Kim Wasson and Cornelius Fichtner

At its core project management is all about effectively leading your team. Therefore emotional intelligence for project managers and project leaders can be just as important (if not more) than knowing how to interpret the latest earned value data.

This interview about emotional intelligence for project leaders with Kim Wasson was recorded at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Congress 2016 in San Diego, California. We discuss her paper and presentation One Unhappy Person Can Ruin Your Beautiful Plan -- Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers. Here is the abstract:

Just one unmotivated person on your team can bring everything crashing down. Unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and lack of motivation are highly contagious; ‘one person’ quickly turns into an unhappy and possibly dysfunctional team.

We're all focused on getting the process right and there’s no doubt that process is important. What many of us don’t take into account is that the success of most projects depends largely on the teams actually doing the work Process is important but it’s not going to build anything on its own – it’s a team of satisfied, competent people working together who will actually deliver a product.

The people side of the project management equation is critical. Managing effectively requires the ability to understand individuals and teams, establish working relationships, manage goals, and motivate team members. Effective tools and techniques discover what makes the team members and the team itself tick, to communicate effectively with many different people both one-on-one and as a group, and to generally balance the process part of the equation with the people part of the equation are critical to project success.

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Denise McRoberts and Cornelius Fichtner

Setting up a PMO usually means setting up some Project Management KPI (Key Performance Metric). But which?

This interview about PMO metrics with Denise McRoberts was recorded at the PMI® Global Congress 2016 in San Diego, California. We discuss her paper and presentation "Meaningful Metrics -- The Path toward Measuring what Matters". Here is the abstract:

"The project management office (PMO) was in a rut. The number of projects in work at any one time was increasing; project managers were routinely reporting that all was well while schedules slipped, and there was limited understanding of true project costs." Does this sound all too familiar? In this session, attendees will learn some innovative methods to implement metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to better understand your organizational weaknesses and how to overcome them. This session will provide a case study on how a PMO did just that, with plenty of practical examples

You will learn what makes a 'good' metric, how metrics should be developed, and that we also need specific project metrics and project portfolio metrics.

Click to download the white paper Click to download the handout with metric samples

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Suketu Nagrecha and Cornelius Fichtner

The Project Management Institute (PMI)® Educational Foundation is a charitable nonprofit organization, with the mission to inspire and empower people to realize their potential and transform their lives and their communities through the use of project management knowledge. This interview with Suketu Nagrecha, PMIEF Chair, was recorded at the 2016 PMI Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss:

• The history of PMIEF
• How PMIEF can help you with
  - Scholarships
  - Grants
  - Awards
• How you can apply for a scholarship, grant, or award
• How your or your employer can become a PMIEF donor
• And we'll hear a story from a project manager whom PMIEF helped in his career

Full disclosure: My own company is a PMIEF donor and offers certification scholarships. If you are thinking of earning a PMI scholarship but lack the means to do so then please visit https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/scholarships to learn how to apply.

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Kristine Hayes Munson and Cornelius Fichtner

Sharp influencing skills are a major factor that help project managers succeed. This interview about leading without authority with Kristine Hayes Munson was recorded at the 2016 PMI® Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss her paper and presentation "Getting Things Done -- Influence Without Authority". Here is the abstract:

"Project managers frequently face the dilemma of how to accomplish the project’s work without having any functional authority. Resources assigned to the project report to someone else who writes performance appraisals and recommends pay increases. In addition, resources may be assigned to multiple projects with competing priorities. Project managers must rely on their ability to influence others to get work done in a timely and thorough fashion.

This paper explores the influence cycle and the associated skills to be used by project managers in order to get things done using influence rather than authority. Five stages comprise the influence cycle: (1) prepare, (2) ask, (3) trust, (4) follow up, and (5) give back."

The paper concludes that in regards to leadership without authority "Developing influence skills is hard work and takes conscious effort. The influence cycle is designed to be repeated for each project in order to help us as project managers continue to improve our influence skills. Our success as project managers and the success of our projects depends on our ability to use influence to get things done".

Click to download the white paper

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Beth Spriggs and Cornelius Fichtner

This interview about assumptions in project management with Beth Spriggs was recorded at the 2016 PMI® Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss her paper and presentation The Risky Business of Assumptions - Uncovering the Truth, as We Assume It to Be. Here is the abstract:

We all hold assumptions, then make decisions and take actions based on those assumptions without verifying their validity. Worse is when other people hold assumptions about our work and we don’t know it. This can impact user adoption, timeline, scope, quality, and overall project success. Not to mention personal frustration, stress, and desires to pull out one’s own hair.

Unchecked assumptions can be very dangerous in the workplace. We should be mindful of some common assumptions and actively work to uncover assumptions. Doing so will bolster project work and open up new paths for identifying risks.

Some project assumption examples that Beth introduces us to are assuming a project or task is easier or faster than it actually is, assuming priorities are aligned and haven't changed, and assuming who owns, or is responsible for, what.

Very importantly the paper and discussion also include a section about uncovering assumptions. Here, Beth offers us 5 ideas on how to develop and expand our project assumptions list.

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Dave Davis, PMP, PgMP, PBA

When we last spoke with Dave L Davis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dldavispmp) we learned about the basics of benefits realisation and benefits realisation management? We discussed the benefits management process and focused on the important aspect of how all of this fits into project benefits management.

Now that we understand the theory of benefits realization management it’s time to take the next step and ask “How do we actually do all of this”. Luckily, Dave has a lot of experience in applied benefit management and he happily agreed to this second interview, so that we can take a look at a case study.

You’ll hear how we project managers are involved in the overall process, the importance of engaging stakeholders, how to ensure alignment between benefit management and organizational strategy, and of course, we will also look at metrics.

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Dani Ritter and Cornelius Fichtner

This interview with Dani Ritter was recorded at the 2016 PMI® Global Congress in San Diego, California. Dani is the Manager, Community Engagement at Project Management Institute and her primary focus is the PM community of www.projectmanagement.com.

In the interview we discuss:

• Why projectmanagement.com is at the congress
• Its mission and relationship to PMI
• How much it costs being a member (spoiler alert: it's free!)
• The available resources, some of which are free PM templates, white papers, or webinars
• How the community can help you if you have a PM related question
• The online games (PM Wars and PM Challenge) that it offers
• How members can get the most out of the site
• How anyone can earn free PDUs by reading articles and attending virtual events

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Dr. David Hillson and Cornelius Fichtner

This interview with Dr. David Hillson was recorded at the 2016 PMI® Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss his paper and presentation My Stakeholders are my biggest risk -- help!. Here are two passages from the paper:

Abstract:

Stakeholders can pose a real risk to our projects—at least some of them can—and project managers and their teams need to be aware of this and take steps to control risks to their project that arise from risky stakeholders. As with all risks, stakeholders present both positive as well as negative risks, and we need robust ways of identifying which stakeholders offer opportunities, and where potential threats might lie.

This paper presents a structured way of identifying risky stakeholders based on a best-practice stakeholder analysis model (The Stakeholder Cube). It explains how risky stakeholders might influence a project based on their power, interest, and attitude. Finally, the paper shows how applied emotional literacy can be proactively used to influence risky stakeholders in order to optimize the outcome for the project.

Conclusion:

A risk is any uncertainty that could affect achievement of project objectives. Some of the biggest risks in projects arise from stakeholders, and project managers and their teams need to be aware of these risks and manage them proactively. As with all risks, there are both positive and negative stakeholders, and it is important to identify which stakeholders offer opportunities, and where potential threats might lie—and then act appropriately.

David is retiring and this was his last active participation at a PMI Global Congress in North America. He plans on continuing to attending the EMEA congresses and he has offered to be available for interviews over Skype in the future.

In this interview we talk about managing risky stakeholders, bringing together the disciplines of stakeholder engagement and risk managemetn. You'll hear some useful tips for making sure you're tailoring your risk responses in project management to your project and the stakeholders you work with.

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Cyndi Snyder Dionisio and Cornelius Fichtner

This interview with Cyndi Snyder Dionisio was recorded at the 2016 PMI® Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss her presentation "PMBOK® Guide -- Sixth Edition: Preview of Coming Attractions". Here is the session description:

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) is being updated as we speak, and the Sixth Edition will soon be published. This session provides insights into the new edition, including a peek at a new chapter on the role of the project manager. For each Knowledge Area, there are new sections describing key concepts, emerging trends, and tailoring considerations, as well as updates to ensure the PMBOK® Guide remains relevant to most projects, most of the time. Come and find out what to expect!

Cyndi was the chair of the team that worked on updating the guide and in her presentation (as well as in this interview) she introduces us to the publication timeline as well as many of the changes that are coming our way. This was of particular interest to me professionally, because the guide is a central text that we use in our PMP certification training for our students.

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Dave Davis, PMP, PgMP, PBA

Here is the first sentence in Mark Langley’s foreword of the in-depth report Delivering Value - Focus on Benefits during Project Execution, which PMI published as part of it’s Pulse of the Profession Series:

A project is truly successful only if it delivers the benefits an organization envisions.

Mark Langley, PMI President and CEO

At first glance this sentence is awfully obvious to us project managers. But having good and successful benefits realization management and thereby turning this statement into a reality is what makes our job so hard. And rewarding.

So what exactly are benefits realisation and benefits realisation management? Is there a benefits management process and how does all of this fit into project benefits management?

How about if I let Dave L Davis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dldavispmp) explain it all to you? He has authored one of the articles in that Pulse of the Profession report from where I took the earlier quote. The article is titled “The Benefits Management Journey” and serves as our guide.

We’ll learn what exactly benefits realization management is, review the process of implementing it on projects, meet the people involved, and we’ll even talk about tools.

And at the very end of this episode you’ll learn that even failings project have benefits

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Are you using The PM Podcast to earn your PDUs? Then please make sure that you are using the correct PDU tracking logfile:

Download The PM Podcast PDU Logfile (XLSX) and track each episode you listen to. The better you document your learning activities the more you can give evidence to PMI that you have indeed subscribed and listened to The PM Podcast during an audit.

If your PDU records are audited, you will need to provide your logfile to show what you have learned, so it's important to keep your personal records up-to-date in case you are ever asked to produce them. As a Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential holder, for example, you will have to evidence you really have earned 60 PDUs for PMP renewal.

You can use the logfile to record any free PMP PDU learning you have undertaken from our podcasts, as well as any paid programs or podcasts you used as part of your professional development. As it's an Excel spreadsheet, you can edit and amend the file to suit your needs, keeping in mind that it is your primary evidence log for podcast learning.

And for all the details about this, please visit our PDU tutorial and learn How to Earn 60 Free PDUs.

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Bruce Harpham, PMP

If you are a regular listener to The PM Podcast then you heard me say on many occasions that projects are the mechanism by which companies turn their vision and strategy into a reality. And it is us -- the project managers -- who are asked to bring these projects to a successful completion so that the business needs are met.

This means that we project managers need a great deal of business acumen and business awareness. But many of us are accidental project managers, who at some point in our career found ourselves to be quite shockingly thrust into the position of a project leader. We were taken by surprise back when that happened and now they suddenly tell us that we also need all this awareness?

Well, fear not because Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham and http://projectmanagementhacks.com) is here to tell you how to grow your business know-how as a project manager. In this interview we review what foundational skills you need, how to access internal business knowledge from your organization and how to look for information and trends in the broader environment outside the four walls of your company.

Our goal is to help you grow the situational awareness that you need day after day on your projects by adding business awareness.

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Bruce Harpham, PMP

Does your project rely on virtual teams? If yes, then it means that working remotely is the norm for your project team members.

Are they doing their work effectively and efficiently? And even if you answered yes, there is always room for improvement, right? Good, because how to make remote work productive is our topic today.

Our interview guest is Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham and http://projectmanagementhacks.com) who has written about remote workers and how to increase all our effectiveness. He argues that working virtually is simply the reality on many projects and project teams these days.

And so in order to help us improve remote work he recommends the following four steps:

• Evaluate your current tools
• Review communication preferences and strengths
• Analyze the project’s requirements
• Adjust your communication practices

We’ll go through each of these in detail with lots of examples from his own experience.

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Lindsay Scott

If you are working in a PMO then we have something good for you today.

Lindsay Scott (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/projectsmanagementrecruitment) from Arras People is back to talk us through the PMO Benchmark Report 2016. Yes... last week we looked at the overall PM Benchmark Report and right now it’s all about PMOs.

We are going to review who PMO practitioners are, who they work for, what their professional development looks like, how PMOs are set up, what functions they provide, where in the organization they are located from a reporting perspective, we’ll hear some PMO thoughts and challenges, and finally, we are going to be talking about www.pmoflashmob.org.

To download your PDF copy of this report, please visit the Arras People website and Request the PMO Benchmark Report 2016. You are also going to be invited to fill in the survey for the next report.

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Lindsay Scott

For over a decade now, Arras people has been publishing their yearly project management benchmark report and so I’ve invited Lindsay Scott (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/projectsmanagementrecruitment) to introduce it to us to this latest version.

Lindsay says about the report, that even after all this time of doing the research and seeing the changes over the years, it is hard not to be drawn to the fact that project management is still an exciting and growing field. The fact that projects are still failing suggests that even with all the effort and time expended we are still searching for that magic bullet which will ensure we deliver.

Of course, the report doesn’t give us this magic bullet, but it provides an interesting insight into what you and I are doing day after day.

There are two options for you to get a copy of this report:

• First, download your copy right here...
• But your second option, which is actually the better one, is to visit the Arras People website and Request the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016. Because in that way you are also going to be invited to fill in the survey for the next report.

Project Management Benchmark Report 2016

Click here to download the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016...

Download your copy of the report simply by clicking on the link above.

If, however, you want to be invited to take the survey for next year's report then please Request the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016 directly from the Arras People website.

You'll be asked to provide your basic information and will be contacted when the survey for the next report is sent out. It's a great way to give back to our community.

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Joseph Flahiff, PMP, PMI-ACP

Decision making in project management can be hard. That is of course especially true if your decision making process is such that every decision you have to make must be passed up the command chain in your organization until finally someone up there has the time to review your input and make that project decision.

But what if there were an easier way for project management decision making?

There is. It is called the Proximal Decision Making Model and I’m welcoming back Joseph Flahiff (www.whitewaterprojects.com -- www.linkedin.com/in/josephflahiff) to discuss it with us.

We begin with a definition, look at what’s wrong with today’s decision making process, offer a way to make decisions simply by flipping a coin and then look at the proximal model in detail with lots of examples, tips and tricks. All with the goal that you can improve your project management decision making process.

This interview is in part based on Josephs's article titled "The best approach to leveraging change".

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Niraj Kumar, PMP

Is PMP certification worth it? According to Niraj Kumar (www.leadproje.com -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thenirajkumar) the answer is an emphatic yes!

He not only says that the PMP salary you can expect is greater on average, but he also found many other PMP certification benefits. Having a shared vocabulary and enjoying a completely different and often steep career path are just two of them.

So if you are either already PMP certified or thinking about your own PMP Exam Prep and and wondering about the value of PMP certification, then this interview is definitely for you. Niraj and I explore the benefits of being or becoming a PMP from various aspects.