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Have you ever wanted to take "The Pulse" of project management? You know, have a simple way at your disposal with which you could see and learn what's going on with project management these days? To learn what people are talking about, maybe learn about new tools & techniques and just generally understand where our field is heading?

Well... I have... many times. And my answer to this is a new feature here on The PM Podcast called "The Pulse" that you will be hearing here every few months. In the pulse you will hear the voices of a number of Project Management bloggers out there and learn what they are writing about, what they hear from their readers and what they read on other blogs. These bloggers are at the forefront of project management today. They constantly ask themselves "Where is PM going these days?", "Where am I going as a PM?" and "What's new and cool that I could write about for my readers?".

And it's that inquisitiveness that we are bringing together here on The Pulse for you to learn from.

The bloggers that you will hear from today are:

• Peter Taylor: www.thelazyprojectmanager.com
• Josh Nankivel: www.pmstudent.com
• Terry Doerscher: www.planview.com/enterprise-navigator-blog
• Elizabeth Harrin: rebelsguidetopm.com
• Soma Bhattacharya: www.steppingintopm.com

If you yourself have a blog and would like to be part of The Pulse then let us know to be included.

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In 1965 Bruce W. Tuckman devised the five stages of team growth and today, we are going to take a look at all 7 of them... yes you heard me right all 7.

For this we welcome back Pam Stanton. We will first review the 5 traditional stages, explain why she sees the need for 7 instead of 5 and review the major differences. Then we discuss the need for us PMs to be masters of our soft skills for team development, how we sometimes fail in this endeavor and how the 7 stages may help us overcome that.

We are still in the process of giving away 2 copies of her book The Project Whisperer. One copy - as always - is reserved for our premium listeners and one copy is up for grabs. To win the book please go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for the post about the book giveaway and leave a comment.

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I have an interesting confession to make... I love curling. Yes... I really enjoy that sport where the players slide stones over ice towards a target area at the far end of the playing field. I love to play it and I love to watch it as well. And, you might ask, what does that have to do with project management? Our guest Pam Stanton will explain the connection between the two in our interview when we talk about her book and practice called The Project Whisperer.

But you'll not only hear how curling & project management connect, you'll also learn what a project whisperer is, how you can benefit from being a project whisperer and what the first steps are for you to become a project whisperer. And of course... we are giving away 2 copies of her book. One copy - as always - is reserved for our premium listeners and one copy is up for grabs. To win the book please go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for the post about the book giveaway and leave a comment.

By the way... did you miss me last week? Or did you not even notice that we didn't publish an episode? But for all those among you who actually noticed and where wondering "where is this week's PM Podcast?" we skipped it, because... drum roll please... I am happy to announce that I became a US Citizen. I got sworn in on Friday and you can imagine that I had my mind on other things.

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Last week, we had Scotty Bates (www.teamrg.com) on the show and we discussed, how Program Management has changed over the past 30 years.

Today, he and I are going to take a look at how risk management has gone from a more or less informal project activity to the formalized discipline that it is today.

We'll look at the role that IT has played in this process, what the differences are between an issue & risk, how to convince your sponsors that risk management is necessary even on small and medium sized projects (which will be helpful for those listeners wanting to improve risk management in agile projects) and how the attitude of us project managers to risk management has changed over the years.

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What would you say is the single biggest change that has occurred in the area of Program Management between 1981 and now? Did it make a difference if you had a PM certification in 1981 and wanted to get a program management job versus today? What skills did a program manager need in 1981 then and today?

Well... if you think that these are some more questions out of Jeff Furmans "Project Management Answer Book" that we discussed in our last episode, then you'd be... wrong.

Instead, these are the questions that I asked Scotty Bates. Scotty currently works for Robbins-Gioia (www.teamrg.com) and he has been actively involved in project and in particular program management for the last 30 years. So let's look at what these changes are and learn how they influence how much better (or worse) we manage programs today.

I also wanted to thank everybody who participated in our 20-books giveaway. We had purchased 20 copies of Peter Taylor's latest PM book "The Lazy Blogger" and we had an incredible number of people signing up to win one of them on our Facebook Fan Page. I'm not going to read out the names of the winners here, but we had 10 winners from among our free listeners and we had 10 winners from among our paying premium subscribers. The winning names have been published on our Facebook Fan Page.

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In this episode we are going to tackle a subject that I don't think we have looked at previously: Ethics in Project Management.

To shed more light on this we are talking to Jeff Furman who has a whole section of ethics in his Project Management Answer Book. We're starting out by looking at ethics in general, move on to ethics & legal aspects and then carefully tread our way though a number of interesting ethical situations.

Would you like to win a copy of Jeff's Book? That's easy! As always we are giving away 1 copy to our paying premium Podcast listeners and 1 copy is up for grabs. All you have to do is go to our Facebook Fan Page, find the notice about the book giveaway and leave a comment. We will draw the winners around the 9th of Feb 2011. So make sure you stop by before then.

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Have you ever wondered what the formal definition of a project is? Or what the main elements of a project charter should be? How software can assist you in project management? What you should include as part of your PM Planning toolkit? If there are times when the baseline doesn't refer to the complete project plan? What the most effective group creativity techniques are in eliciting requirements? Or what the best way is to avoid scope creeep?

I could go on and on and on with questions like these, because I have a copy of The Project Management Answer Book, written by Jeff Furman. It's full of questions and answers like these. Jeff intended and wrote this book as an easy-to-use Q&A reference, that explain key project management concepts in bite-size pieces, including hundreds of hands-on tips and best practices for us PMs. He included diagrams, study aids and Top 10 lists to help PMs prepare for the PMP® & related certification exams.

In his foreword, Andy Crowe says the following about the book: The Project Management Answer book covers an amazing breadth of topics. The advice it offers is concise and straightforward. It is brimming with wisdom from someone who faced these questions in the real world and has sifted through the various theories and practices to find what works.

With the Project Management Book of Knowledge 7th Edition being worked on, it's always good to stay up to date with the basics.

Would you like to win a copy? That's easy! As always we are giving away 1 copy to our paying premium Podcast listeners and 1 copy is up for grabs. All you have to do is go to our Facebook Fan Page, find the notice about the book giveaway and leave a comment. We will draw the winners around the 9th of Feb 2011. So make sure you stop by before then.

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This is a "special" episode of The PM Podcast in which we announce the giveaway of 20 books.

Peter Taylor (The Lazy Project Manager)[Update: the website is no longer available, so we removed the link] wrote a new book called The Lazy Blogger, focusing on various stories from his project management career. This book is for sale on Peter's website and costs £3.50 [Update: the website is no longer available, so we removed the link] out of which £3.00 are donated to the UK Cancer Research.

We have purchased 20 copies of this book in support of Peter's effort and we are giving away this book to our listeners. 10 copies go to our paying premium subscribers and 10 copies go to the free listeners.

To participate in this giveaway please go to The PM Podcast Facebook Fan Page, look for the 20 books giveaway announcement and leave a comment. The winners will be drawn on January 31, 2011.

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This episode is not about project management. It's about how to find your next project management job.

This is a premium episode. And normally, that means that only our paying, premium subscribers can listen to it. But we have decided that for a second time in just 2 weeks we are giving everyone access to this premium episode.

Why? Because this episode is once again not about project management per se, but it is about job searching strategies. In particular, it is a discussion with Career Coach Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com) about a presentation he recently gave called: Career Networking with a Purpose. And because there are so many PMs out there looking for a job, I found that it's important to let everyone hear this and help them find a job. 

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This episode is not about project management. It's about how to find your next project management job.

It looks like the economy is recovering. After a couple of years of going down there are now many encouraging signals that indicate an upswing. And that means... there are once again more projects going to be started and companies will start hiring project managers.

If you remember, a few months ago we had a group of recruiting experts on the program who gave us their job search insights. Because I know that so many project managers are looking for a job right now, I decided to invite one of these experts, Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com) back onto our program to present to us "30 ideas of a successful job search". Tim collected and published these ideas as part of a book with the same name. But don't worry! We didn't bring onto the program to sell you his book, we brought him here to talk about his ideas. The book itself is free.

You'll hear in the interview that while Tim's book is free he also offers a real paper-based version. And as always... we are giving away 2 copies. One of these copies automatically goes to our premium listeners and the other one is up for grabs for anyone. Are you interested? No problem... just go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the announcement with the book giveaway and just add a comment. Anyone who leaves a comment on this book giveaway notice gets a chance to win. And obviously 1 copy is reserved for our premium listeners.

Which brings us to the winners of our last book giveaway: We had two copies of Elizabeth Harrin's book "Social Media for Project Managers" to give away. And the winners are...

• Kareem Shaker was selected at random from among all the people who left a comment on facebook
• And from among our premium listeners the lucky winner is... Josephine Brookes from Surrey in England.

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This is part 2 of our 2011 Predictions podcast, for which we have invited 7 guests who are giving us their predictions for project management in 2011. They are in order of appearance:

• Hal Macomber
• Terry Doerscher from Planview, whose blog you can find at www.planview.com/enterprise-navigator-blog
• Ian Knox, VP Marketing, www.daptiv.com
• Josh Nankivel, from www.pmstudent.com
• Elizabeth Harrin from rebelsguidetopm.com
• Mark Perry from BOT International at www.botinternational.com
• Tom Mochal from TenStep at www.tenstep.com

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If you are a regular listener of The PM Podcast, then you know that at the end of the year we always produce a humorous "bloopers" episode, where you can listen in to all those funny moments when things went wrong and nothing worked the way it should have. Unfortunately, we have done this for 5 years now and we're really getting good at not making too many of these bloopers. So in an effort to bring you something new, we decided to create a podcast with predictions from project managers around the world.

We invited 7 guests onto this and next week's episode to give us their predictions for project management in 2011. They are in order of appearance:

• Mark Perry from BOT International at www.botinternational.com
• Tom Mochal from TenStep at www.tenstep.com
• Elizabeth Harrin from rebelsguidetopm.com
• Terry Doerscher from Planview, whose blog you can find at www.planview.com/enterprise-navigator-blog
• Ian Knox, VP Marketing, www.daptiv.com
• Josh Nankivel, from www.pmstudent.com
• Hal Macomber

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We need your vote:

Do you want more episodes with book reviews from The PMI LA Book Club? Please take our 2 question survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/pmilabookclub (Survey is open until Dec. 31, 2010)

About this episode:

In our last PM Podcast Listener Survey you (the listeners) told me that you would also like to hear book reviews on the podcast.

So we teamed up with The PMI Los Angeles Chapter's Book Club and in Episode 151 we brought you the first 2 book review.

Today, we continue with 2 more books.

1.  “Lean Project Management” by Laurence Leach, reviewed by Mark Layton
2. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars” by Patric Lencioni reviewed by Sani Abdul-Jabbar

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When I interviewed Elizabeth Harrin on her new book "Social Media for Project Managers" my first question was the skeptics view. I basically asked her "why should I bother with social media on my project because after all... I have to deliver results and not waste my time of Facebook."

Well... we decided that the proof is in the pudding, or rather the proof that social media works on projects is in the case studies.

So in this, the second interview on Social Media and Project Management with Elizabeth Harrin, we are going to present a number of case studies that illustrate nicely, that social media tools can indeed provide value on projects if you apply them appropriately.

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Social Media is one of the hot topics these days. As a project manager you are bombarded with articles and podcasts that talk about social media and how you as a project manager should embrace these tools.

Really?

Isn't social media just another way of communicating? Do we really need and believe in all this hoopla and hype? To discuss this a bit more in detail we met up with Elizabeth Harrin who is the author of the book called "Social Media for Project Managers". We discuss how social media is transforming project management these days, how we need to adapt, how social media will drive efficiencies in our work, the "7 C's of social media" and much more. Project manager coaching and mentoring doesn't often address this topic, so I'm delighted to be bringing you something that is at the forefront of the way we work.

As always, when we have an author on the program we are giving away two copies of the book. One is reserved to our premium listeners and the other is up for grabs for everyone. To participate, please go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for the note where we mention this giveaway and add a comment. Oh... and click the "like" button too.

Before the interview with Elizabeth we also had the announcement from Terry Doerscher for all those among you who work in a PMO and who would like to participate in an upcoming webcast held by him and Mark Perry. [Updated: the The web page is no longer available so we removed the link so has been removed.]

One thing that is worth mentioning is that social media as a way to communicate is relevant to all project approaches. Whether you are trying to stay in touch with your waterfall team, or you work in the role of project manager in SAFe agile environment, or any other type of iterative or even hybrid project delivery context, then this episode is relevant to you. After all, we all need to talk to each other, right? Social media is just one more tool for the toolbox. Let's get into the interview now.

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As a recap...: Earlier this year PMI announced that CEO Gregory Balestrero was going to step down. Later on it was further announced that COO Mark Langley had been named as his successor.

At the 2010 PMI® North American Congress in Washington D.C. the members of PMI's New Media Council, which I am a part of, had the opportunity to sit down with Greg and Mark to discuss the past and the future. I brought my recording equipment and today you'll hear part 1 of this interview. Part 2 will come your way next week.

And just for your information, the members of the New Media Council that you'll hear asking questions are Josh Nankivel, Dave Garret, Bas deBaar, Chalyce Nollsch and Cornelius Fichtner.

Part 2 of the interview picks up with Greg recounting a story showing how project management has come a long way in the past 9 years...

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

Earlier this year PMI announced that CEO Gregory Balestrero was going to step down. Later on it was further announced that COO Mark Langley had been named as his successor.

At the 2010 PMI® North American Congress in Washington D.C. the members of PMI's New Media Council, which I am a part of, had the opportunity to sit down with Greg and Mark to discuss the past and the future. I brought my recording equipment and today you'll hear part 1 of this interview. Part 2 will come your way next week.

And just for your information, the members of the New Media Council that you'll hear asking questions are Josh Nankivel, Dave Garret, Bas deBaar, Chalyce Nollsch and Cornelius Fichtner.

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This episode is sponsored by https://www.pducast.com:

Let's face it: The economy has seen better times and many of my project management colleagues are out of work looking for a new job. Only a few short years ago, I had been in that very same position: I had just lost my PM job with an internet startup company and for the first time in my life I had to go out and look for work. This was mainly because I was in a new part of the world, I didn't have a network of colleagues built up and everything about the job market and job search was new to me.

Eventually, I found a fantastic job. But it took a lot of hard work on my part and trying to figure out the best approaches of job hunting. And of course, it was all learning by doing and more often than not it was "failing by not doing it right".

That's what this episode of The PM Podcast is going to help you with. We have 3 interviews with staffing experts: Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com), Melanie McCarthy (LinkedIn Profile) and Jack Molisani (www.prospringstaffing.com) were speakers at the recent PMI OC "Evening of Transition". This is a yearly event in my chapter's events calendar and I took the opportunity to ask each of these experts a number of questions about how we project managers should best approach our job search in today's market.

Click here to read the Project Management Interview Questions that we mention during the podcast...

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The international project management is happening every year on the first Thursday of November. This means that this year "our" day is on November 4th.

Happy international project management day to you all!

The founder of the international PM day is Frank Saladis. In today's episode you are going to first hear my interview with Frank in which we learn more about the international PM day. And then following the interview you are going to hear Frank sing because he wrote "The Project Manager Blues". It's a good song, it's a lot of fun (at least if you are a PM) and Frank kindly allowed me to play it for you.

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This episode is sponsored by https://www.pm-summit.de:

Mark Phillips, Lead Evangelist of Vertabase, is our guest today and he makes an interesting statement. He claims that all project managers are agents for Economic Growth. Really? Cause I've managed mostly small and medium sized project thoughout my career and I didn't see myself as an economic growth agent. And most of the companies I've worked for also didn't have the appropriate corporate culture to make me one.

So you can guess that I was a bit skeptical, when Mark first suggested this topic. Let's hear what he has to say about these arguments and what skills and mindset such a Project Management Agent of Economic Growth needs.