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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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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 (http://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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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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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.

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This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator:

Bill Duncan (http://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 (http://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.

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So far in our Leadership Podcasts Series we have first heard Rick Valerga and Thomas Juli who are both authors on project leadership discuss their leadership models on expectation management and leadership principles. Then we spoke with Andy Kaufman and we learned how to develop our own leadership skills and those of our team - including the appropriate worksheets for our premium listeners..

Now... it’s time for some hands on project leadership tools.

Enter Susanne Madsen (www.susannemadsen.co.uk) and learn about adaptive project leadership.

Adaptive project leadership is a project leadership tool that will help you identify the appropriate leadership style for your project team members. Just like every project is unique, so are your team members. Your leadership style has to follow suit.

As a special bonus item, Susanne is sharing some free leadership tools. She is making her adaptive leadership white paper and worksheet available to all our listeners. We’re discussing the matrix from this paper in the interview, so you may want to take a look at the filled in matrix on page 3 first. You can manually download the worksheet from pm-podcast.com in episode 191. However, if you use Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or any other app to subscribe to and download our podcasts, then you will very likely already see this file on your computer.

Click here to download the adaptive project leadership white paper and worksheet...

Susanne Madsen has made her white paper & worksheet "Adaptive Leadership" available as a PDF document to all our listeners. Click the link to download it.

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In last week’s episode we gave you tips, tricks and lessons learned how you can improve your project communications with proper use of modern tools. Call them social media tools, call them enterprise 2.0 tools, call them whatever you want. But at the core of using them is the understanding that many problems on projects can be avoided with proper communication and collaboration within your project team.

But there are still unsolved problems on our projects.

In this second interview with Robert Szilinski and Michael Krebs (www.esentri.com and www.social-pm.com) we talk about the need for a flatter top-down hierarchie, combining Agile with waterfall, using enhanced social media concepts for project management and other ways of integrating social media tools into enterprise project management.

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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.

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What would you say is the biggest problem on projects today? Is it the ever increasing complexity? Is it project sponsors who are absent?  Is it the impossible expectations that our customers have?

Robert Szilinski and Michael Krebs (www.esentri.com and www.social-pm.com) say that it’s neither of these. Instead, our top problems are all internal to our project teams. They are communication, collaboration and integration of all team members and their knowledge into the overall project.

Robert and Michael’s answer to help improve project management is to enable our teams to work on a level that is more integrated, based on sharing and trust. Much of this in connection with Social media tools for project management. We’ll get a ton of tips, tricks and lessons learned from how they have used these social media tools on projects.

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The toolkit for project managers in the area of Enterprise 2.0 (often also called Social Media Project Management Tools) is vast. We have wikis, blogs, networking tools, microblogging, videos, podcasts. It’s a sheer endless list of tools that our project participants suddenly expect us to use and be proficient in on our projects.

But where should you start? How should you start? Which tool is appropriate for which task and (almost more importantly) for which target audience. These are just some of the topics that we touch upon in our 2nd interview with Dennis Brooke on Enterprise 2.0 Tools for Project Managers.

We’ll even look at the questions of “Isn't this whole Enterprise 2.0 /Social Media stuff not simply just a gimmick?” and how do we get people to change and use the tools properly?

Click here to download the presentation...

Dennis Brooke has made his presentation "The New Collaboration for Project Management Success – Enterprise 2.0" available as a PDF document to all our listeners. Click the link to download it.

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Let’s be honest with each other. Last week, when you finished your project status report... how did you distribute it to the intended audience? You sent it via email... right?

Well, that is SO internet 1.0.

Our interview guest today is Dennis Brooke (http://www.dennisbrooke.com) who’s passion it is to help you adopt Enterprise 2.0 project management tools and move you into the 21st century. At his website you can read stories about life, business, and even project management

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In this episode of The Project Management Podcast we are going to review "The Manifesto for Agile Software Development". It is better known by the simpler name The Agile Manifesto and you can find it at http://agilemanifesto.org/.

The focus of our review of the manifesto is (of course) going to be on agile project management - in particular: what does the manifesto and its 12 principles mean for our work as PMs in an Agile environment.

I hear from a lot of project managers wanting scrum agile project management training, and before you move on to the more advanced topics, it's important to get the foundations right, which is exactly what this episode will help with.

I am going to give you my personal thoughts on this by analyzing the manifesto itself and then looking at each of the 12 principles and relating them to a PM's work. Whether you are using scrum project management, or have taken on the role of project manager in SAFe Agile or are working (or plan to work) in any other agile environment, this episode is a great introduction to the basic principles.

This episode is available both as a video and also as an audio-only version. Stop by at www.pm-podcast.com to download the version you want. Agile project management with scrum is a growing topic for agile practitioners, so this episode is one you won't want to miss!

Correction: At 19:45 I attribute the "Theory Y" to Ouchi. That is incorrect. "Theory Y" is from McGregor.

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In this episode of The Project Management Podcast we are going to review "The Manifesto for Agile Software Development". It is better known by the simpler name The Agile Manifesto and you can find it at http://agilemanifesto.org/.

The focus of our review of the manifesto is (of course) going to be on agile project management - in particular: what does the manifesto and it's 12 principles mean for our work as PMs in an Agile environment. I am going to give you my personal thoughts on this by analyzing the manifesto itself and then looking at each of the 12 principles and relating them to a PM's work.

This episode is available both as a video and also as an audio-only version. Stop by at www.pm-podcast.com to download the version you want.

Correction: At 19:45 I attribute the "Theory Y" to Ouchi. That is incorrect. "Theory Y" is from McGregor.

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:

In this premium episode we are going to continue to develop project leadership skills. But not just anybody’s skills. We are focusing on what you and I can do as project leaders in order to enable our own project teams to take more leadership responsibilities. After all, one important trait of a project leader is that she or he helps others on the road to leadership. We'll also learn some tips you can use to grow your leadership skills as well.

My guest is Andy Kaufmann, PMP from The  Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development (www.i-leadonline.com and www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com). In the last episode of our leadership podcasts series, all our premium listeners received a free copy of his two Leadership Appraisal worksheets. If you are a premium listener and you haven’t seen those yet, please take another look at episode 184 and look for the PDF documents. For this interview on team leadership development Andy is offering his Team Charter worksheet to you. All paying, premium subscribers can download the PDF and use it the next time they have a team kick off meeting.

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In today’s episode we continue our PM Podcast project leadership series. I have invited Andy Kaufman, PMP from The  Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development (www.i-leadonline.com and www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com) to discuss how each and everyone of you could go about to develop your project management leadership skills.

In this episode of our leadership podcasts interview series, Andy and I discuss how project management differs from project leadership, if a project leader needs subject matter expertise, why he recommends that we develop capability in our teams and of course he gives us his tips on developing project leadership skills.

As a special gift to our premium listeners, Andy is making two Leadership Appraisal worksheets available to our premium listeners. You’ll get both the self appraisal and the others appraisal form. One is for you to fill in and one is to give to your peers, team members or boss to fill in.  So... if you are a premium listener: thank you very much for suppoprting the podcast financially and please check your podcast app for these 2 PDF documents. (Note: These worksheets are not available on our website or via the free podcast. They are delivered via your paid, premium podcast subscription feed.)

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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. Please click here for everything you need to know about earning Free PDUs from The PM Podcast...