Play Now:

Communication is a critical, but often overlooked, component of successful project management. This means that we project managers must strive to becoming better communicators. But you cannot do that just by reading the PMBOK® Guide. It takes years of practice!

Enter Bill Dow and Bruce Taylor. Together they have over 60 years of project management experience and so they decided to write the “Project Management Communications Bible”. It contains many tools, techniques, and best practices in the area of project communications that you need to successfully execute projects, keep your team and customers fully apprised, and deliver crucial information in a timely manner.

Together we are going to take a look at a survey that was done in 2007 to determine the "Top 9 Reasons Why Projects Fail". Go ahead... guess... what might be #1?

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) describes a methodical approach for analyzing and collectively managing a group of current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. And yes… you’ve heard me say this exact sentence about 2 weeks ago as I introduced the interview with Rick Moreau from Compuware. The reason why I am repeating this sentence here is because you are going to hear from 8 companies who were exhibitors at the Gartner PPM & IT Summit and learn more about 7 PPM Solutions and 1 online project management community.

The original plan was that I would have a short interview with every single one of the solution providers at the exhibition for you. Unfortunately in the end only the following7 solution providers and 1 media company had a representative who found the time to talk to me:

• www.daptiv.com
• www.compuware.com
• www.portfoliodecisionware.com
• www.gantthead.com
• www.myclarity.com
• www.planview.com
• Update: Some companies are no longer in business, so we removed their links above.

The order in which they are listed and in which you will hear these interviews in this episode is completely at random. I got a business card from each of my interview guests, tossed them into a hat and drew them out one by one. And the way they came out of the hat is the order we present them to you.

Play Now:

I attended the Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit in Orlando, FL last month. During this time I got a chance to speak with Gartner's Audrey Apfel and learn more about specific findings and recommendations that Gartner has for it's clients.

Unfortunately, I was 25 minutes late to our 30 minute meeting.

However, Audrey was kind enough to get with me over the phone, so that we could still discuss the summit, what she sees as surprising research findings that were presented, her personal thoughts on important Project Management Office (PMO) strategies that organizations should keep in mind and lastly we also look at her recommendations in regards to Project Portfolio Management and Governance that companies with an existing structure and those who are just starting out must know about.

She has some excellent advice for all of us.

If you are interested in learning more about Gartner's services please visit www.gartner.com. Also, the tentative dates for the 2010 PPM & IT Governance Summits are May 2010 in London and June 2010 in Orlando, FL.

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

In our first interview with Rick Moreau from Compuware (www.compuware.com) we looked at how to blend Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and agile software development methods for your organization.

One facet of the equation is a solid PPM tool – but as I always like to say “A fool with a tool is still a fool”. So how exactly can we ensure that our PPM tool helps us increase project success? What are the features to look for and use in these applications? And how do we implement it to ensure that our project managers are more than just "fools with tools"?

Well… who better to ask than someone who is at the forefront of PPM tool development? Say someone like Rick Moreau, who is the Field Enablement Director for Compuware's Changepoint PPM solution? In this premium episode rick and I explore this topic in more depth.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

In this episode you will hear a roundtable discussion with Ron Holohan and Shawn Futterer on The Virtual Project Management Office (PMO).

Ron works for a large consumer electronics company and a number of project managers directly report to him. He also created the company’s internal PMO portal. Shawn works for a telecommunications provider and is in charge of one of several large projects and also has other project managers who are reporting to him.

We talk about what we think a virtual PMO is and then I go and I kind of ambush the guys to determine if they have all the necessary components it takes to build a virtual PMO. Oh… and we are also joined by Mark Perry – but only virtually.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

Last week you heard part 1 of Margaret Meloni’s excellent discussion titled “Congratulations, you’re out of work” and part 2 will be coming your way next week.

For this premiium episode, I decided to give Margaret a call and dig a little bit deeper into the subject, with an emphasis on what we project managers can / should do when we get laid off.

You may now be thinking “Hey… I still have a job and I don’t need this” and I would beg to differ. Listen in to what Margaret has to say. She is so incredibly positive about this and even if you have a very secure position, I bet that you know a project manager whose project was recently finished and he/she is out of work. I certainly do and I promise you that I will paraphrase what Margaret says and help my friends deal with their situation.

If you want to hear part 2. visit Episode 114: Congratulations You're Out of Work (Part 2)

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

About two weeks ago, Margaret Meloni, PMP sent out an email that was titled “Congratulations You’re Out of Work”. Of course I immediately opened and read it because it was such an odd subject.

This email led to a discussion between us and I quickly realized that what she has to say can be of enormous help to the project management community. After all, not a day goes by on which we don't hear about yet another company that is reducing their staff by several thousand. Some of you may be affected. I decided to bring Margaret back. So here is part one of Margaret Meloni’s discussion on how you can turn being laid off into a positive experience.

Part two will be published in about 2 weeks.

If you want to hear part 2. visit Episode 114: Congratulations You're Out of Work (Part 2)

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

This is Part 2 of a presentation by Margaret Meloni.

About a month ago, Margaret Meloni, PMP sent out an email that was titled “Congratulations You’re Out of Work”. Of course I immediately opened and read it because it was such an odd subject.

This email led to a discussion between us and I quickly realized that what she has to say can be of enormous help to the project management community. After all, not a day goes by on which we don't hear about yet another company that is reducing their staff by several thousand. Some of you may be affected. I decided to bring Margaret back. So here is part two of Margaret Meloni’s discussion on how you can turn being laid off into a positive experience.

I encourage you to visit Margaret's website at https://pmstudent.com/ to check out her blog and her take away programs.

Play Now:

This is the third of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This is the fourth and final special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

In today’s episode I am talking with Kristine Hayes Munson, PMP.

Kristine was my first ever interview guest and she has been on the program several times since then. She has come back because of some recent developments on her team: They have had some layoffs and her team lost a number of people. “How do you deal with that?” is the question of the day and many of you may have to go through a similar situation.

You might be leading a project team that loses some of its members or, like Kristine, you might be the manager of a team of project managers and the economy is forcing you to shrink. Kristine and I talk about the approach that she has found effective in helping your team cope with this situation.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

In this week we revisit Episode 34 of the PM Podcast.

That particular episode was released on May 27, 2006 and it was an interview with Kristine Hayes Munson on her methodology of managing projects in an organizational environment where the project team has no formal authority. It was called "Getting It Done". Until today, the episode has been listened to just about 31,000 times and Kristine’s presentation on the topic is nearing 50,000 downloads.

So we thought that it might be a good idea to revisit the process of Getting It Done and see what she has learned. After all, almost 2 years (and not 1 year as I claim during the interview) have passed, Kristine has presented her process to a number of professional organizations in the USA and she has tweaked and perfected it. So here are the Lessons Learned from Getting It Done.

Play Now:

This is the first of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This is the second of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production. The Japanese word kanban is a common everyday term meaning "signboard" or "billboard" and lacks the specialized meaning that this word has acquired in English. According to Taiichi Ohno, the man credited with developing JIT, kanban is a means through which JIT is achieved.

It was out of a need to maintain high level of improvements that the kanban system was devised by Toyota. Kanban became an effective tool to support the running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.

In project management, Kanban can be described as a signaling system to trigger action. We welcome Eric Landes (http://aspadvice.com/blogs/elandes/default.aspx) and we get a wonderful introduction to Kanban. We discuss what Kanban is, what its benefits are, how it overlaps with project management, what you see when walking into a Kanban environment, if it works in an environment where no physical products are produced and we introduce you to a great number of resources.

And in our Gizmo's segment we present The Project Perfect Whitepaper Index. It contains about 100 white papers on project management topics. Sign up for the Project Perfect White Paper Mailing List and you will receive an email whenever a new paper is published. Highly recommended.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode is is a continuation of last week's discussion with Eric Landes on how to use Kanban in Project Management. Last time we looked at the theory of Kanban and today we look at the practice. Specifically we are going to discuss how Eric introduced Kanban in their department at Robert Bosch as a case study.

We’ll start out with the overall goal they had set themselves and then move pretty quickly to the hands on of how it was implemented, how the team received the change, how the customer received the change, the learning curve, the metrics used, improvements as compared to before and Eric will also give you his recommendations of what worked and what didn’t work for them so that you can try implementing Kanban yourself but avoid some of the pitfalls.

And then you are even going to hear a segment of our discussion from AFTER we stopped the official recording.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

A little earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in an online webinar from gantthead (http://www.gantthead.com). Mark Perry (from http://www.botinternational.com/pmo-podcasts.html) and I each gave a presentation on a specific topic on setting up a PMO. Mark's presentation discussed constituent and non-constituent focused project management offices, in which he conveyed the message that a PMO which is not focusing on the needs of its customers will eventually fail. And he had a great case study in support of this.

My presentation - the one which you see in this episode - is titled The 4-week PMO. This is a 90 minute presentation, which for the purpose of the online project management webinar was shortened to about 40 minutes. At some point I hope to turn the complete presentation into one of our PM Lectures. But for now, here is my approach that will give you a roadmap that enables you to set up your initial PMO framework in about 4 weeks.

Watch the Video:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_111_OT_2008_12-26_-_No_PMI_Methodology.m4v

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

The new PMBOK® Guide 4th Edition will be available on Dec 31 2008. We take this opportunity to talk about one of the bigger misconceptions that people have about the PMBOK® Guide: They think that is is a methodology.

In this regard, you may hear many people say that they are "using the PMI Methodology" on their project or that they have "implemented the PMBOK methodology at work". In this presentation we explain why the PMBOK Guide is not a methodology, but a framework.

This is one of our Premium "Overtime" Episodes, which are normally reserved to the subscribers of the Premium PM Podcast. However, this is also the first of many presentation style episodes that we will publish, so it is made available to everyone, so that you can see what you would receive with your subscription to The Premium PM Podcast.

Watch the Video:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_117_2009_04_17_-_PMO_Value.mp4

This episode is sponsored by:

In December of 2008 I was invited to be the host at the 2009 PMO Summit in Coconut Grove, Florida. As the host, it was my privilege to set the tone of the day and begin with a short, 10 minute keynote presentation to set the tone for summit.

I decided that (because I had never seen anything like it before) that I would create a short survey to determine the value of the PMO. I did so and over 500 people responded. This video shows the results of this survey.

It was at that PMO summit that I met Terry Doerscher from Planview and you have heard him as a guest in the previous 2 episodes. In one of them he presented the PMO 2.0 Survey Results. So it was indeed interesting for me to see that other people had done similar surveys and it was also interesting to see that our surveys both complemented and contradicted each other a bit. This was definitely due to the fact that his survey was much more in-depth while this one here was really just trying to take the pulse of the podcast audience.

Watch the Video:

Audio only:

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

From December 8-10 I attended the PMO Summit 2008. This event was organized by IQPC who had asked me to chair the event. I agreed and so I flew to Florida and acted as the Master of ceremonies (so to speak) for 2 days.

The event itself was a success. We had 2 days full of presentations & workshops. I met a lot of new people, hopefully gained a few more listeners for the Podcast and I had a fabulous Italian dinner and you’ll see part of that dinner during the show.

I already did a similar review with Mark Perry from the PMO Podcast and that discussion was released to the listeners of the Premium Podcast. If you want to become a premium listener and receive additional episodes of the PM Podcast then please stop by at the website and click on the  Premium Subscription button at the top left