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A couple of days ago I returned from the 2008 PMO Summit in Orlando Florida. It was 2 days of excellent presentations that have taught me many new and current concepts of Project Management Offices (PMO) but which have also confirmed much of what I knew.

Mark Perry from The PMO Podcast also participated at the summit. I invited Mark to come on the program and give me his views of what he has learned. So he and I got together to discuss what we have learned from each presentation during the conference.

This is the first of two reviews that I am going to do on the summit. This one with Mark is only for the Premium Subscribers.

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Everywhere you turn these days project management experts are talking about the need for us all to move from project management to project leadership. Here at The PM Podcast we have tackled this subject a number of times on previous leadership podcasts in the past and today we will continue this journey by taking a look at The Advantage of Leadership.

The Advantage of Leadership is the name of a book that contains words of wisdom from various leadership experts. It was born of the belief that you can never have too much information. It brings together the knowledge and wisdom of individual leaders from across the field, offering a most comprehensive resource for the reader. It contains 11 chapters, each written by a different expert. It covers a broad spectrum of topics like leading with motivation, leading a team, servant leadership or learned leadership.

To discuss a number of concepts from the book we welcome leadership development expert Stan Levanduski, PMP. He is the driving force behind The Advantage of Leadership and helped bring it all together. Stan is also one of our lecturers on PM Lectures, where he teaches us how to respond to Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects.

As always when we discuss a book on the program we are giving away 2 copies of the book. Please listen to the episode to learn how to participate.

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If someone asks you explain what you do as a project manager, do you sometimes struggle to explain it? It’s easy to explain the hard tasks like building houses, changing processes or developing software, but once I get to the less tangible items like project team motivation or relationship management I usually begin to lose the listener. It gets even worse if you have to explain the value of project management to your senior management. It is very difficult to find solid facts that we can use to show that there really is value in our work.

This problem has puzzled our profession for a long time. That is why the PMI has funded a study on the value of project management and it’s results have been released.

We can finally and with scientific certainty say that there is indeed value in what we do.

Our guest today is Mark E. Mullaly, PMP, President & Chief Organizational Therapist of Interthink Consulting Incorporated. He is the co-lead investigator on this study and you can look forward to hearing a great interview.

And don't forget to stop by at PM Opinions to write a short review for The PM Podcast. Even just one sentence will help!

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Has your project ever been audited? Was it a good experience or would you much rather spend 2 hours at the dentist instead? We met up with Elizabeth Harrin, author of Project Management in the Real World , at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver last month and we discussed not project audits, but its cousin Peer Reviews.

We define what a peer review is and how it compares to a formal project audit. We shine a light onto the fact that peer reviews will help you as a PM to keep honest. In particular during the more hectic times of a project, when it’s easy to say that “I just don’t have the time to have the risk management meeting this week”.

And of course, we look at how you should prepare for a peer review both from the perspective of someone who is giving and someone who is receiving such a review.

We also introduce you to a new Gizmo: It’s a new website called PM Opinions where you can read and write reviews on project management products and services.

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Two weeks ago I discussed Opportunity Creep. The discussion then was sparked by a meeting I had at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver earlier this year. Today, I want to discuss Robot Project Management.

In particular, I want to call out to you and help you avoid becoming a Robot Project Manager.

This concept, too, was sparked by one of the many discussions at the Global Congress. And if you have never been to any type of project management meeting like that then I can heartily recommend it. It doesn't have to be a big one like the congress either. A simple local PM gathering will do. The people you meet and the conversations you have will positively influence you and your career.

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Two weeks ago I was at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver Colorado. For two days I was surrounded by about 4,000 other project managers. I listened to a number of great and not so great presentations and I also participated in a few meetings of the PMI’s New Media Council. There were presentations on all kinds of topics including scope in project management.

My biggest problem is that in such moments it is very difficult for me to turn my brain off and more often than not thoughts collide and synapses meet and out come usually some good ideas and insights on project management. I have a personal issue with scope control in project management! The scope of what I thought I would be thinking about is spiralling, and I think that's a good thing! It shows the value of attending these events.

And over the coming episodes, I would like to share my thoughts with you, here on The Premium PM Podcast.

And I thought that since it is around Halloween, I start out with something CREEPY. In particular, Scope Creep.

To be precise, scope creep and the fact that it isn’t really all that bad a thing to happen on your project. In fact, I recommend that we should all embrace scope creep on our projects. Understanding scope creep is a crucial part of project scope management, but not one that we need to avoid.

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In part 1 of this Podcast you heard the voice of Brantlee Underhill, who heads up PMI's Virtual Communities Project. Since this project aims at replacing the current SIG structure with a centralized model and thereby dissolving the SIGs this means that the one voice we definitely want to hear is that of the SIGs.

That is why we got together with Derry Simmel, who is the PMO SIG’s Vice Chair Membership. We met Derry at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver and - as you might suspect - we get to hear a slightly different view of the VCP project than in part one.

If you happen to be a board member of another SIG and you would like your voice heard then please let us know. We’ll be happy to put you on.

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Are you by any chance a member of a PMI Specific Interest Group (SIG)? If so, then you will definitely be interested in what today’s interview guest has to say. We had a chance to speak with Brantlee Underhill at the PMI® Global Congress 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Brantlee heads up the PMI’s Virtual Communities Project. In a nutshell, this project aims at creating a unified and centralized infrastructure for all SIG activities. The bold step that the PMI is taking in creating this centralized approach is that the independent SIGs will be dissolved and reintegrated into the PMI itself.

As you can imagine, there are many viewpoints on such a move depending on which side of the fence you are on. Some think it’s a good idea and some don’t.

The voice that you hear today is that of the PMI. We also had a chance to speak with a board member from one of the SIGs that is affected by this move and we’ll get to hear him in part 2. And there will probably be a part 3 and 4 as we look for other voices on this topic..

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In the last episode, Margaret Meloni, MBA, PMP and Cornelius Fichtner, PMP explored how to keep your cool when you are dealing with Jerks at work. However, there is an increasing focus on project managers in regards that they are now expected to become project leaders. This means that you not only have a lot more responsibility but you also will need different skills. So we are now going to jump a lot deeper into this subject and look at this topic from the point of view of a project leader.

We look at how you handle jerks on your projects in such a way that everyone can walk away feeling good.

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This episode is a few days late because I have been on a week long business trip. I am now all relaxed and ready to once again face my colleagues at work. But of course, in the first meeting that I have to attend today, there is the (grrrr) jerk who every time manages to push my buttons. If there were only a way to deal with this guy!

Well… we have all been in this situation on our projects and luckily, there is help there is help just around the corner. And that help comes to you in the form of Margaret Meloni, MBA, PMP. She has been a regular guest here on the Podcast and because all of us know a jerk or two (or have sometimes been a jerk ourselves) Margaret is going to open up her resource toolkit for us and help us deal with the jerk on our project team.

We also take a quick look at Margaret’s two blogs and we announce the winners of two copies of the PM Lecture “Dealing with Difficult People”.

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This is just a quick note to let you know that Episode 106 will be a few days late. I am going on a business trip to Paso Robles, CA, so I won't be able to publish the new episode on the 11th. Instead it will be released on the 14th.

But the good news is that because of this we are extending the deadline for the promotional giveaway of  the PM Lectures "Dealing with Difficult People " until Monday 13th. All you have to do to participate is to go to https://www.pducast.com and sign up to the newsletter. Use the sign up for that you see in the left hand navigation. The prize is worth $60 and 2 PDUs. And just for participating in the contest you will receive a 10% discount coupon.

Oh and we also have a new sponsor, so I want to say thank you to Boeing for supporting us!

Until next time!
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP

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In this Overtime episode we welcome back Gene Dutz to discuss teleconferencing hard tools. We look at Webex, Adobe Connect Pro and Dimdim. The last one, by the way, is free. Gene introduces us to the features of these services and how to use them effectively on your project. For instance did you know that you can use these services to record your teleconference so that team members who were absend can listen to the conference later on and catch up?

This is just one of the many tricks he has up his sleeve to help you use these tools to the fullest.

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Did you by any chance participate in a teleconference this week? And if so, how was it? Did people participate? Were they on time? Was there an agenda and follow up? Could you hear and understand everyone clearly? And did the teleconference begin and end on time?

If your teleconferences are in any way like the ones that we participated in on past projects, then you probably answered “no” to a number of these questions. But it doesn’t have to be this way, says Gene Dutz, business systems analyst and project management consultant. In this interview we discuss a number of soft and hard tools that will improve the overall quality of teleconferences on your projects. In most cases, these are easy to implement and come at little to no cost.

But we also have a very exciting announcement: We are launching Project Management Lectures, where we offer online project management training by the worlds brightest minds in project management today. To celebrate, we are giving away 2 copies of the first lecture called Dealing with Difficult People by Margaret Meloni, MBA, PMP. To participate, simply go to www.pducast.com and sign up to receive our newsletter. We will draw a winner on October 11th and everyone who signs up after the publication of today's episode gets a chance to win. This prize is worth $60 and 2 PDUs. Good luck!

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Today’s overtime is an interview of our show host Cornelius Fichtner by Wayne Turmel from the Cranky Middle Manager Show.

Last week, Cornelius interviewed Wayne on the role of our bosses in Project Management. And today you get to hear Wayne interviewing Cornelius about how projects fit into into an organization and how important project management can be for organizations. Cornelius makes the case, that every single project in a company is very important.

He starts out by looking at a tiny project that is going on somewhere in a department, how this project relates to the overall economy of the country and then we bring it back to the performing organization and how each project should be embedded in this company’s strategy.

Lastly, we also take a look at how an ideal structure of management by objectives will help accidental project managers understand why they are doing a particular project and how it ties back into the company goals.

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Every project manager has a boss whom he or she reports to. At the end of the year this boss will be responsible for our performance review and decides whether or not we get an increase in salary. But during the year, most of us are wrapped up in our projects.

We have deadlines and budgets to meet, customers and other stakeholders to satisfy, risks to manage and then there are always these pesky project team members that are acting up. So what do our bosses do during all this time? Do they just sit back, sip coffee and enjoy the fruit of our labor when we successfully deliver the project end result?

Wayne Turmel from the Cranky Middle Manager Show doesn’t think so. He sees the role of our boss more along the lines of… but why don’t you listen in and hear him tell it in his own voice?

We also announce the winners of our MPMM giveaway, where two lucky listeners receive a copy of this project management methodology. And we speak to Josh Nankivel about his new Gizmo that give a personal blog to any PM Student.

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There are many ways for you to learn about project management. The best one is certainly through your own personal experience of managing a project. However, another very effective way to learn about what not to do is by hearing accounts of projects that have gone wrong. Hearing about the problems that occurred without having to suffer through them yourself will enable you to see similar issues on your project and then try and steer clear. In today's episode you are going to hear an account of such a project. Our show host Cornelius Fichtner has been mentoring a junior PM over the past 18 months on an important project that has gone from one problem to the next. Listen in to his recounting the story of the project and giving you tips on how to improve your weekly team conference calls and to use your status reports to make management face the facts of a project in trouble.

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We are a few days late with this episode of The PM Podcast because I was gone for the weekend. My wife and I celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary and so we decided to go to Catalina Island, which is both a tourist destination and a nature reserve just off the coast of Orange County here in CA. So that makes this a couple of days late.

But wait… did I just say a couple of days…? No no no! We are just about ONE YEAR LATE! The interview that you will hear in this episode was recorded in late 2008. Getachew Teklemariam and I got together at that time, recorded this interview, I got it ready for publication and promptly forgot about it. That is until I received another email from Getachew about 3 weeks ago and I was wondering if we ever published this. No we hadn’t. As such, you could say that this particular sub-project is just about one year late...

In the interview, we discuss the overall state of project management in Ethiopia, the available training infrastructure, the industries using project management, how project management in Ethiopia could generally be strengthened and of course, what we project managers around the world can do to help.

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Have you ever had a project that was 7 months late? Today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast is such a project. In January of this year, our show host Cornelius Fichtner was on a cruise in the Mexican Riviera. During this cruise he recorded a number of Podcast episodes that were supposed to be published in February. But for some reason, today’s episode was forgotten and is now finally being published. In this episode, we focus on improving your project team performance by focusing on the project team members themselves. We have a number of helpful resources (click on the link below) that discuss how you can focus on your team members and we look at a specific example in which Cornelius helped one Podcast listener to support one of his team members and thereby keep a project on track. We are also giving away 2 licenses of the MPMM Project Management Methodology . Listen in to hear how to participate.

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Have you ever wondered what the differences are between some of the major PM methodologies? If yes, then this episode will definitely be of interest to you. Jason Westland and I take a closer look at the following 10 PM methodologies:

• MPMM
• Scrum
• RUP
• AUP
• EUP
• UPMM
• Tenstep
• PMCOP
• SSADM
• IEM

You'll get to hear their strengths, what they are used for and we'll throw some "PM methodology history" into the mix as well.

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Having a solid project management methodology that everyone in your organization follows is one of the most basic building blocks that any company needs. Jason Westland (www.mpmm.com) is joining us on the program today to discuss how to first select and then implement a project management methodology that fits your company needs and also your corporate culture. Jason will introduce you to a simple 5-step process that will guide your project management methodology implementation from start to finish. And because Jason has such a vast project management experience we also wanted to know from him why it is, that so many methodology implementations fail and give us his recommendations on what can be done about it.

We also announce the lucky listener who wins 1 professional edition of Insight Tree.