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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

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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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

If you are a PMP® credential holder then you know what the acronym PDU stands for. It stands for Professional Development Units. Every PMP needs to earn 60 of these PDUs every 3 years in order keep his or her certification. The idea behind having to earn these PDUs is a simple one. PMI wants every PMP to continuously learn. Just like doctors or pilots who have to take classes regularly and practice new skills in order to keep their license, PMI wants us PMP® credential holders to learn new project management skills so that we can be the best project managers possible.

The rules describing which activities count towards PDUs and how you have to report and claim them is documented in the “PDU Category Structure and Policies” document. In March 2011 PMI released a new version of these rules that is a lot less complex than the old one. So this has been out for about 10 months now, however, I still receive a lot of emails from confused PMP® credential holders who have questions about it. So I went ahead and sat down with Rory McCorkle from PMI to discuss the new structure and get clear descriptions and explanations directly from the horses mouth.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• Why were the PDU policies changed?
• We’ll define the rule that “One hour of effort is equal to one PDU”
• We’ll discuss the PDU Divisions and Categories
• We give examples of PDU earning activities
• And lot’s more.

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Seriously... there are no bloopers this year. So don't bother looking for any.

Move along now... no bloopers to see here. Or hear here.

Now really... why are you still here? Go to another episode now.

But if you don't believe me and insist on still pressing the play button above, then please do enjoy yourself. We try hard to record our episodes as flawlessly as we can, but unfortunately we just keep stumbling over our tongues (or draw a complete blank when trying to ask Peter Taylor a question). Have fun.

But as I said... there are NO bloopers here. ;-)

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

This is another interview recorded at the PMI North American Congress in Dallas Fort Worth. My guest is Rory McCorkle who is the PMI Product Manager - Credentials (and he will tell you himself at the start of the interview what exactly that means). The reason why I’m talking to him is bring you the latest information about the new PMI-ACP certification - that is to say the PMI  Agile Certified Practitioner Exam.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• When did the PMI-ACP certification get started?
• How was PMI-ACP developed?
• What value does the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner certification have for us as professionals working in agile project management as well as our employers?
• What are the pre-requisites that you have to fulfill before you can take PMI-ACP exam?
• And lot’s more.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

This is the 2nd episode with interviews that I recorded on the road in recent weeks. As a special treat you are going to hear not just one, but four interviews today that were recorded at the PMO Syposium in Dallas, TX. Each interview is obviously going to be about PMOs, but with a twist...

I attended the PMO Symposium to help out Mark Perry. Mark is a good friend of mine, the host of The PMO Podcast and his company BOT International was an exhibitor at the PMO Symposium. He asked me to fly in and help at the BOT booth. There I quickly realized that the other consultants from BOT International who were working at the booth were all exceptional experts in their fields. So I decided to ask each of them 3 questions that connect their field of experience with the topic of PMO.

In this episode you will hear:

• Terry Doerscher with whom we focus on Project Portfolio Management
• Steve Romero whose expertise is IT Governance and how it relates to PMO
• Mel Bost who will tell you what a PMO needs to do in order to improve lessons learned in your organization
• And last but not least Mark Perry with whom I discuss what business driven PMO setup and strategy means.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

At the end of October I attended the PMI® Global Congress in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. Two weeks later I attended the PMO Symposium in Orlando Florida. As always I meet a lot of interesting people at these events, which is a great opportunity for me to sit down with them and bring you their thoughts, concerns, ideas and insights.

So over the coming weeks we are going to delve into 10 interviews that were recorded at these two events and we begin with a discussion I had with two representatives from the PMI Guadalajara Chapter from Mexico.

My guests Felipe Nunez and Edgar Polanco are attending the congress mainly to participate in the PMI Leadership Meeting, which usually precedes the congress. In this meeting leaders and board members from PMI Chapters get together to learn from each others experience of leading a volunteer project management organization.

We discuss their impressions of the Leadership Meeting, the Global Congress and how they will be setting up their own, local congress in Guadalajara in 2012.

Click to download the video:

In case you haven’t listened to part 1, 2 or 3, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

In part 4 we see the video responses of

• Mark Langley - www.pmi.org
• Peter Taylor - www.thelazyprojectmanager.com
• Rich Maltzman -  https://earthpm.com
• Wayne Turmel

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When I started thinking about what to do for episode 200 knew that I definitely didn’t want to do a self-congratulatory, anniversary episode. So I decided instead that I would be lazy, take a step back and ask 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The responses I received are as varied as the people I asked. In total we have over 1 hour of insights, which is why episode 200 consists of 4 parts. Parts 1-3 are all the audio responses and part 4 are the videos.

And now... without further ado here are

• Josh Nankivel - www.pmstudent.com
• Mark Perry - The PMO Podcast
• Margaret Meloni - PM Student
• Tom Mochal - www.tenstep.com
• Max Wideman - www.maxwideman.com
• Jason Westland - www.method123.com

with their number one challenge and solution to project management today.

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In case you haven’t listened to part 1, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Ron Holohan
• Roberto Mori - www.ipma.ch
• Elizabeth Harrin - rebelsguidetopm.com
• Stacy Goff - www.ipma-usa.org
• David Blumhorst - www.daptiv.com

have to say.

By the way... Roberto Mori is the president of IPMA, Stacy Goff is president of ASAPM and you might be wondering if I didn’t reach out to PMI’s president Mark Langley... I did and Mark sent us a video response. To hear what he has to say please watch part 4 with all the videos that we got.

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In case you haven’t listened to part 1 and 2, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Mark Horstman - www.managertools.com
• Jack Ferraro - www.myprojectadvisor.com [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]
• Lindsay Scott -  www.arraspeople.co.uk
• Soma Bhattacharia - www.steppingintopm.com
• Terry Doerscher - www.botinternational.com
• Andy Kaufmann - www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com

have to say.

And when you are done don’t forget to watch part 4 in which you’ll see the four video responses that we received.

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

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

In our first interview with Jamal Moustafaev, PMP (www.thinktankconsulting.ca) we looked at what portfolio management is and what benefits it will bring to a company once they have it implemented. But how do you implement it? Where do you start with portfolio management and what strategic approaches should you apply?

These are lots of good questions and Jamal has lots of good answers coming up.

As always, when we have an author on the program to discuss his or her book, we are giving away two copies. One copy automatically goes to one lucky premium subscriber and the other one is up for grabs. Please stop by at facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the book giveaway notice.

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There is an old PM saying that goes like this: Projects don’t fail at the end... they fail at the beginning. But when exactly is “the beginning”? Is it scope definition? The kick off meeting? The creation of the charter?

For Jamal Moustafaev, PMP (www.thinktankconsulting.ca) it is even earlier than that. A project starts at project selection, which is why he wrote a book about it called Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management. In today’s interview we are going to take a look at project portfolio management and how it helps companies to deliver these exceptional results.

Here is what Jamal wrote about his book on Amazon:

I hope that, after reading this book, junior project managers and technical team members will feel compelled to share it with their superiors so that these superiors can learn how to select projects properly and gain an understanding of the daily challenges faced by project managers. It is also hoped that senior managers who read this book will realize that there are still some improvements to be made to their project management practices and will pass this book on to their colleagues.

Portfolio management can be considered part of strategic and business management, and you may recognize that term from the PMI® Talent Triangle. We're always looking for ways to help you earn 60 PDUs towards your recertification requirements, so I hope you enjoy the episode. There are plenty more PMP PDU Podcast episodes available to you, so you can always have something to listen to as you go about your day.

As always, when we have an author on the program to discuss his or her book, we are giving away two copies. One copy automatically goes to one lucky premium subscriber and the other one is up for grabs. Please stop by at facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the book giveaway notice. EDIT: Please note that the giveaway is now closed.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Insider - Free PDUs Info For Everyone:

Even though our industry has quite a bad track record of failed projects, that doesn’t mean that we need to stick our head in the sand. Joel Fleiss (www.eppora.com) is one of those thinkers who looks at the problem and tackles it head on.

In part one of the interview we looked at 7 areas of project portfolio failure and right now you are going to hear about 4 more: We start out with a recap of part 1 (just in case you’ve already forgotten what we talked about) and then we will see how Cost Estimations. Workflow and Warnings, Staff Productivity and Labor Resource Allocation can lead to project failure and what can be done about it.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Insider - Free PDUs Info For Everyone:

Many of you will remember Joel Fleiss (www.eppora.com) from our past interviews with the PMI LA Book Club. We heard him review one of Patric Lencioni’s books. But Joel is more than just a book reviewer, he is a senior project manager and project management consultant in his own right.

He has worked in our industry for several decades, both as a project manager and in development of project management software and he has seen the good, the bad and the ugly projects. And it’s the ugly projects that fascinated him most as he was wondering: Why do we have such a bad track record in successful projects and what can we do about it?

The answer to this question can (and does) fill several books, so it’s not surprising, that we had to cut his interview and his answer up and deliver it to you as a two-part series.

In part 1 of our look at portfolio failure, Joel and I are going to look at  a Definition of Project Failure, Project Methodology Evolution, Goals and Tactics, Project Selection, Requirements management, Schedules and Testing. Joel will explore what the problems are and what he recommends can be done about it.

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The first Thursday of November is just around the corner, which means that another year has gone by and we are heading for another International Project Management Day (https://www.internationalpmday.org). Frank Saladis, PMP, is the founder of this day and we’ve had him on the program once or twice in the past talking about the event.

So I figured that inviting him back and only talk about the IPM Day would be rather boring for everyone. However, Frank is also an accomplished and very experienced senior project manager. So I decided to tap into his vast knowledge of our profession and dig deeper.

In the interview, Frank and I begin with a quick review of the international PM day, but then we immediately move on to other PM Topics. We look at how the project management profession is regarded by the general public, what we as PMs can do to help those around us understand what exactly it is that we do and then Frank takes the pulse of the industry. He looks back to see where we are coming from, gives us his view of the current state of project management and then we glimpse into the future to see where he thinks that we are headed.

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This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator:

In today’s episode we are going to take a look at a number of criteria that you can apply in order to select between Agile and waterfall-based project management methodologies.

And let me just say that the title of the presentation… “Criteria for selecting Agile over Waterfall… or not” was intentionally selected to be a bit controversial but I promise that what you will be seeing and hearing in this video will look at many facets and give you a better understanding of the matter at hand.

The reason why we are looking at criteria "for and against" Agile today has to do with the fact that I recently gave a 2.5 hour long webinar presentation for The PDU Podcast. I received great feedback about that presentation and decided to share some of my insights here on The PM Podcast with you.

Once you've heard this episode, you might also be interested in hearing more about the Agile manifesto in project management, and we have a great episode on that too.

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This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator:

In today’s episode we are going to take a look at a number of criteria that you can apply in order to select between Agile and waterfall-based project management methodologies.

And let me just say that the title of the presentation… “Criteria for selecting Agile over Waterfall… or not” was intentionally selected to be a bit controversial but I promise that what you will be seeing and hearing in this video will look at many facets and give you a better understanding of the matter at hand.

The reason why we are looking at criteria "for and against" Agile today has to do with the fact that I recently gave a 2.5 hour long webinar presentation for The PDU Podcast. I received great feedback about that presentation and decided to share some of my insights here on The PM Podcast with you.

Once you've listened to this episode, if you want to take the topic further, why not listen to another Agile podcast I recorded on the Agile Manifesto in project management.

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

This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator:

Bill Duncan (https://www.pmpartners.com) is back in this episode.

When I asked him what topic he would like to focus on for our second interview, he immediately pointed me to his article Defining and Measuring Project Success (https://www.pmpartners.com/resources/defmeas_success.html). In this article and in the interview you’ll hear in just a minute, Duncan gives us his outstanding view of what success means, what is wrong with the way that we define success on projects today and what success dimensions and approaches he suggests that we start applying to our project today in order to improve measuring success. We also look at what you can do today on your ongoing projects to check if you measure success properly and what you can do in order to the measurement criteria in an ongoing project.

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Have you ever had to deal with a sponsor who didn’t really understand his or her role on the project? Maybe you only met them once and then they basically told you to go away and stop bothering them instead of being involved and taking responsibility for what their role on the project is? And by the way... what exactly IS their role? Can we please define that?

Yes we can. To be precise: GAPPS can and in today’s interview I am welcoming Bill Duncan (www.pmpartners.com) to discuss the GAPPS standard for project sponsors (www.globalpmstandards.org).   

In this interview you will not only hear what the GAPPS standard contains in regards to the sponsor role, but you can use it as a means to do a bit of a cross check on your own projects. Bill Duncan has a lot of valuable insights that you may want to use in the discussions with your sponsors.

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

This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator:

This interview from our PM Podcast Project Leadership Series is another one that I did with Susanne Madsen (www.susannemadsen.co.uk). The project leadership tool that we look at today is... Be The Project Champion.

So you might be wondering what the difference is between a project leader and a project champion? Or whether being a leader doesn’t automatically include the champion aspect? Well... I did too.

The answers to these questions and more will be revealed in today's installment of our leadership podcasts series.