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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.

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Written and sung by Frank Saladis, PMP. Frank is a project management author, trainer, and consultant.... and also very entertaining.

Visit the store at www.successfulprojects.com to order this and other Frank Saladis programs such as the International Project Management Day DVD, Leadership with a View PhotoShow, and other project management training products.

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

Listen to the "Gizmo" Interview in this episode to learn more about our sponsor!

How would you feel, if you only had 140 characters (just like on Twitter) to give a status report to each of your project stakeholders? At first, you'd probably complain that 140 characters isn't enough and then you'd put a lot of effort into customizing the 140 characters you have to the person receiving it. Your internal sponsor would receive a different Message than your external customer and the message would look even different for your project oversight committee chair.

Don't worry... we aren't going to ask you to use Twitter on your projects. In fact, my interview with Mark Phillips, Lead Evangelist of Vertabase, only briefly mentions Twitter and then we discuss why and how you should both customize and contextualize all your project communications. We look at the role we PMs play in this, what skills we need and what you can do to improve the contextualization of your project communications.

We also have a correction to make. After the Gizmo interview with Jason Westland about projectmanager.com in Episode 154  we announced that we were giving away 2 licenses of their web based tool projectmanager.com. Well... it turns out that we misunderstood. The 2 licenses are not for projectmanager.com but instead they are for their PM Methodology called MPMM. So... therefore.. our winners Sandy Koppelmann and Oke Abiodun will receive a license to MPMM in the coming days. Sorry about the mixup!.

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

Steve Kaye has been a guest on our show before and you may know and recognize him as a one of the great experts in the soft skills area - especially when it comes to meeting management and delivering presentations. Steve and I recorded today's interview right after we had finished recording a webinar for our sister podcast, The PDU Podcast. That was the 2nd webinar that Steve did for us over there so we wanted to give you a few tips and tricks in regards to meeting management and effective presentations.

We will look at why they are important for your career, Steve's top 3 tips for for improving both skills, and his recommendation for what you can do tomorrow to have a better meeting and to improve you presentations.

In the past 3 episodes I told you that we were giving away 2 licenses to www.projectmanager.com. And the winners are:

• Sandra Koppelman from Pennsylvania, she is one of our premium podcast subscribers
• Oke Abiodun, who listens to our free Podcast and left the very creative comment on facebook: "mine,mine,mine,mine!!!!!" he said. His name was randomly picked from among everyone who left a comment on our giveaway post.

Congratulations to both of you.

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These are some impressions from my first day at the PMI® Global Congress North America 2010. You'll see Bas de Baar, Frank Saladis, Elizabeth Harrin, Josh Nankivel, Peter Taylor, Dux Raymond Sy, Derek Huether, Chalyce Nollsh and many more.

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These are some impressions from my second day at the PMI® Global Congress North America 2010. You'll see Gregory Ballesteros, Bas de Baar, Mark Langley, Dave Garrett, Elizabeth Harrin, Josh Nankivel, Derek Huether, R. Camper Bull and many more. In particular: check out the final few seconds of the video... now THAT'S a congress I'd like to attend!

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If you have heard Peter Taylor talk about "Productively Lazy Project Management", then you may remember, that projects are thick at the beginning, thin in the middle and then again thick at the end.

But... does this hold true for project communications as well?

After all, we communicate anywhere from 70-90% of our time, so that means that in regards to project communications a project is thick at the beginning, thick in the middle and thick at the end. Or is there a special secret to allow you to have Productively Lazy Project Communications?

Peter Taylor says yes - but it's not a secret. It's simply how you approach things.

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 https://www.pm-summit.de:

One of the most important activities that we project managers do (or are supposed to do) is lessons learned. We are supposed to look back at a past project, make note of what went well and what didn't go well and use this learning as a means to improve our processes and our project management methodology.

In this interview Kristine Hayes Munson, PMP takes us through her lessons learned. The auditors have left her organization after several weeks of in-depth audits and now she is taking stock of their visit and shares her findings with us.

Don't forget - we are still giving away 1 license of projectmanager.com - As always: 1 copy is already reserved for all you premium subscribers. Reserving 1 copy of each giveaway for you automatically is my way of saying thank you for your finacial support. If you want to double your chances to win, then please go ahead and enter manually into the contest as well by going to our Facebook Fan Page, find the announcement of this license giveaway and simply add a quick comment. Just say "I want to win" or "Me! Me! Me" or something equally silly..

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In this special episode we introduce you to <amce_href="https://www.guerrillaprojectmanagement.com/" href="https://www.guerrillaprojectmanagement.com/">Guerilla Project Management - a blog and podcast about the mindset that Project Managers must adopt to be able to effectively manage today’s complex projects.. The show is hosted by Samad Aidane and here is what he writes about this particular episode:

This is part 3 of my interview with Mr. Doug DeCarlo, author of the landmark book, eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility and one of my great Project Management teachers.

In Part 3 of the interview, I asked Doug about these Big Ideas from his book eXtreme Project Management:

• Managing our internal voice and mind chatter.
• Avoiding the “Good Soldier” syndrome
• The myth of the fearless leader

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In this special episode we introduce you to Guerilla Project Management - a blog and podcast about the mindset that Project Managers must adopt to be able to effectively manage today’s complex projects.. The show is hosted by Samad Aidane and here is what he writes about this particular episode:

This is part 2 of interview with Mr. Doug DeCarlo, author of the landmark book, eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility and one of my great Project Management teachers.

In Part 2 of the interview, I asked Doug about these Big Ideas from his book eXtreme Project Management:

• You say that loss of control, both real and imagined, can in part be attributed to what you call project-crazy organization.
• The chapter on Self mastery is one of the most valuable. You make Self Mastery the number one critical success factor for delivering successful projects. You say that when working in adverse conditions, unless you choose self-mastery, you are choosing self-misery by default.
• Definition of Self-misery
• Take us thru the framework you outlined in the book on how to develop Self-Mastery (See yourself, Be yourself, Assert yourself and exercise you personal power)

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In this special episode we introduce you to Guerilla Project Management - a blog and podcast about the mindset that Project Managers must adopt to be able to effectively manage today’s complex projects.. The show is hosted by Samad Aidane and here is what he writes about this particular episode:

I had the distinct pleasure to speak to Mr. Doug DeCarlo, author of the landmark book, eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility and one of my great Project Management teachers.

Few years ago, I read this paragraph in one of Doug’s articles:

When teams heed nature’s call and default to their survival instincts, the best-intended project management methodologies and training go up in smoke. This is why, for many project managers, Guerilla Project Management (GPM) has become the de facto project management methodology of choice.

These words inspired me to start this Guerrilla Project Management blog and podcast.

Doug’s book helped me understand why, like thousands of other project managers, I was struggling leading my projects despite all my best efforts applying all the traditional project management principles, tools, and best practices that I was taught.

For the last fifteen years — from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Beijing, China — Doug has lived in the trenches with over 250 project teams having budgets that ranged from $25,000 to over $25 million. Mission-critical initiatives were in the arenas of: information technology, financial services, e commerce, research and development, process reengineering, continuous improvement, sales generation, new product introductions and organizational change.

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

Let me ask you this: What would you do if the auditors came tomorrow to look at your project and check, if you are following all the best practices, standards and policies? Would you run and hide or are you confident that your project would withstand their scrutiny?

Kristine Munson, PMP is in a similar situation. She knows that her auditors will show up every two years and look at all the projects throughout their complete division. And it's her job to make sure that they pass the audit with flying colors. How does she do it? Meticulous planning, impeccable execution and 10 years of lessons learned that are used to prepare for the auditors' visit. This interview will give you a new sense of what dealing with the auditors means for a project manager.

In this episode, we are giving away 1 license to www.projectmanager.com - please go to our Facebook Fan Page and look for the giveaway notice. Leave a comment on facebook to participate.

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

Do you tweet? Are you on facebook? Or maybe you have a LinkedIn account, a Xing account or an account on any of dozens of social media websites and you may have asked yourself... OK... so how do I use this to 1) find my next job and 2) manage a project using a virtual team?

You've come to the right place because I have invited Bas de Baar to discuss exactly these two topics. We'll start out with a definition of social media, how a project manager can best use social media to network to improve career options and Bas's many suggestions on using social media in a project setting for improved team communication.

And in our Gizmo's section we take a closer look at www.projectmanager.com. We talk with their CEO Jason Westland who has been a guest on the program previously.

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 https://www.pducast.com:

If you work in a small company then it is quite likely that your project portfolio application is just a list of current projects in Word, Excel or even handwritten on a napkin. But once you outgrow this stage you are going to be faced with a myriad of project portfolio tools with an even more confusing array of features that you may or may not need.

My guest today, Curt Finch, is going to make this a lot easier for you because together we are going to look at the 6 top criteria to consider when shopping around for a project portfolio application. We'll be starting out with a more general look at what PPM solutions are and we'll end with looking at which of these criteria companies usually have most problems with during the actual implementation of the software.

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Let's do the following exercise together: Today or tomorrow when you get to your office I want you to take a look at your organizations portfolio of projects. Obviously, the more project management maturity your company has, the more detailed this will be. However, what you will see in most companies is that the portfolio usually only contains the large, important or strategic projects. But what about the smaller ones? You know... those 30 projects which individually don't look like much but when you look at them as a whole they become a sizable chunk.

Often they are missing in the portfolio. So because they are "not important", would take too much time to keep track of, have too small a budget or a million other reasons they are not on anyone's radar. But small projects, while often overlooked, are still crucial to a company's success and will cost you a lot of money if managed improperly.

This is the premise of our discussion today with Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx (https://www.journyx.com). We discuss how he defines a small project, why we tend to ignore the small ones,  how he recommends that we manage all of these small projects, we look at the 3 key best practices that we must implement on a small project to be successful and what you can do today to improve overall management of small projects in your area of influence.

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This episode is sponsored by https://www.pdu-insider.com:

This is a Premium Episode that is available to everyone. Normally, our Premium episodes are only available to our paying premium subscribers. A paid subscription gets you

- Access to all episodes starting from #1
- A new episode usually once per week
- PDF transcript (starting with episode 136)
- Automatic participation in all promotions

Every now and then, we release a premium episode for everybody, so that free listeners can hear what they are missing from the premium version. This is one of them.

In this interview we meet once again with Brian Weiss (PMI's Vice President Product Management) and Mark Emery (he is the business owner of the new CCRS). The reason why we meet them again is a simple one: Have you ever wondered how PMI manages their internal projects? I mean we all heard the old saying that "The cobbler's children have no shoes". This saying refers to the fact that a busy cobbler will be so busy making shoes for his customers that he has no time to make some for his own children.

So the question is then... does PMI get so busy defining and publishing standards in project management that they forget to apply these standards on their own projects?

Let's find out in our interview.

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Do you hold a PMI® Certificate like the PMP®, PgMP®, PMI-RM® or PMI-SP®? If you do, then you know all about PDUs (Professional Development Units). In a nutshell, PMI's Continuing Certification Requirements System (CCRS) says that your certificate is only valid for 3 years and then you will have to apply for recertification. But that doesn't mean that you have to take your test again. It means that you have to earn and then claim a predefined number of PDUs, pay a fee, and voila... your certification is good for another 3 years.

A little while back, PMI gave their CCRS system a major facelift. In our interview you will meet Brian Weiss (PMI's Vice President Product Management) and Mark Emery (he is the business owner of the CCRS). Both have been involved in the project from the start. In our interview we look at why PMI decided to upgrade the system, who has to use it, some of it's features and we also discover our guest's favorite ways to earn PDUs.

Brian Weiss, Vice President Product Management, serves on PMI’s Executive Management Team. In his role, he provides overall leadership, planning and oversight of PMI’s worldwide products for organizations and project management practitioners. Certifications, implementation of new and updated standards, career framework, Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) products and services, SeminarsWorld® training courses and PMI’s Global Congress programs are critical offerings within his area of responsibility..

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

In the 2009 PM Podcast Listener Survey you (the listeners) told me that you would also like to hear book reviews. So we teamed up with The PMI Los Angeles Chapter's Book Club and we bring you today the reviews for 2 books:

1. “Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business” by Patrick Lencioni - reviewed by Joel Fleiss
2. "Why should Anyone Be Led By You?” by Rob Goffe and Gareth Jones - Reviewed by Hiba Hamdan

And here are the winners of our latest book giveaway. We have 2 copies of Terry Doerscher's Taming Change with Portfolio Management. As always, one copy goes to our premium listeners and one goes to our free listeners. And the winners are

• Premium Listener: Don Brown, Mesa, AZ
• Free listener: Benoit Ben

Congrats to both of you.

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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...

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This video explains how to earn 60 Free PDUs from The PM Podcast. All you have to do is subscribe, listen and claim!

This video is an update of the information previously published in episodes 150 and 183. The videos of those episodes have been removed.

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode of The PM Podcast is titled “Earn 60 Free PDUs” because we want to show you how to do exactly that simply by listening to The PM Podcast. Here's how in a nutshell:

• It’s very simple to earn these 30 free PMP PDUs (and they are also relevant PDUs for other credentials too)
• Just keep doing what you are doing right now:
• Listen to (or watch) The PM Podcast regularly
• Claim 30 Category C PDUs from PMI.

Many of you may already be aware of this and also how it is done, but in the last couple of months I have received a large number of emails from listeners out there asking me about how exactly to claim these Category C PDUs that I have decided to make this into a podcast. Project Management Professional credential holders need to earn 60 PDUs for PMP® renewal, so claiming these Category C PDUs will give you a headstart to completing your PDU requirements.