Show notes: This week, I am giving you six PMO Trends that will show you where companies will be taking PMOs in the future. As usual, you will get a few great helpful resources, hear what's happening in the PM News and you'll hear the PM tip of the week that was submitted by listener Thomas Weller from Germany. In a new show segment we are looking at various PM events around the world and wewill be finishing up the show with a review of the PMI-ISSIG's new podcast.
Show Notes: The Fast Track is the fast tracked version of the full length Project Management Podcast. It's my way of delivering a show for you even if I don't really have the time for it. Today, we look at what "Fast Track" means in the PM sense and you can also hear the tip of the week.
Show notes: We are continuing to look at all the soft skills that you will need in your career as a project manager. Today, the topic is "Meetings". My interview partner is Steve Kaye, who is a professional meeting facilitator. We look at what a meeting is, why so many meetings don't achieve anything and how to set up a meeting to achieve a real purpose. Steve Kayes's website is at https://www.stevekaye.com/ and you can contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Like every week, we have a tip of the week that you can implement in your projects right away and we are reviewing helpful resources and take a quick look at project management in the news.
Show notes: Dale Brown is an IT Executive who decided to become a PMP. In our interview we discuss his motivation and schedule as well as what and how he studied in order to take and pass the exam. The following books are mentioned in the interview: Outercore's Achieve PMP Exam Success, Sybex's Sybex's Project Management Professional Study Guide, 3rd Edition and Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition.. You can contact Dale at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at +1 949 387 2508. We are also announcing the winners of our software giveaway for VIP Team To do List and we are reviewing a new podcast by Jerry Manas that talks about (you guessed it) project management.
Jerry Manas's Podcast on Project Management:
Update: Jerry has in the meantime fixed the issues with publishing his episodes as separate podcasts. Here are the updated subscription links for you. To subscribe to Jerry's podcast, simply click on one of the following links (actually... you have to drag & drop the second one into your podcatcher software): [Update 2019: Unfortunately the podcast by Jerry Manas is no longer available so we removed the link.]
Show notes: Today's focus is on Risk Management, which we call "The Black Sheep of Project Management". Risk management in project management is important, but only a fraction of project managers actively manage risk on their projects. Risk management in agile projects is also a trending skill area. Basically, risk is so important to understand as doing so helps us better manage the project towards a successful outcome, regardless of whether you are using hybrid, predictive or iterative methods.
In this podcast episode we discuss why that is so and present a simple technique that will enable you to manage risk on your projects without spending hundreds of hours on this task.
There are many resources to help you manage project risk including the practice standard for project risk management, which many project managers use as their reference guide. We also have some useful resources on this website in the form of past webinar episodes on risk management critical success factors -- these are definitely worth watching for a detailed look at how risk impacts project success. Enjoy the episode!
Don't forget to stop by at Method123, sign up for their newsletter and get the Risk Management Kit for free. Also in this episode: A Good, Bad & Ugly review about TSI's PMP Lunchtime Lecture Series [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link], and we are continuing the giveaway of two free licenses for VIP Team To do List - listen to the show to hear how to participate - time is running out [Update: This giveaway is now closed].
Show notes: We continue to look at the soft skills in project management and proudly present a wonderful interview with Coach Moty Koppes. Her website is at https://www.coachmoty.com and you can write to her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We are also giving away two free licenses for VIP Team To do List - listen to the show to hear how to participate.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Music (00:09): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Cornelius Fichtner (00:28):
Hello, and welcome to show number 19. I am Cornelius Ficthner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 11th of February, 2006. Today I am continuing to go soft on you with my interview guest Moty Koppes, and we'll be talking about coaching being coached and how to improve yourself. But first I am very happy to announce that I have some free software to give about. And this software that we have to give away is VIP team to do lists, and you can find them at, to do lists soft.com. They write about the application VIP team to do list is a professional time and task management software for managing projects, workflow, and resources in small and midsize businesses. It enables team leaders and team members to create, manage, and share to do lists within the team by email. Well, if you want to win one of the two licenses in order to participate in this giveaway, all you have to do is send an email to myself This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in the subject line, simply write to do lists and in the body of the email, write your name and what country you're writing from.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:52):
That's about it. Your email has to reach me by the 21st of February this year, of course, and the winners will be announced on the show of the February, the 25th. So you've got some time there, but the sooner you do it, the faster you are done, um, some of us live in some of us, some of you who have subscribed to the project from hell podcast. I, uh, gave you a review of that a little while back, you may have noticed that it looks like it's no longer being updated well wrong. Um, the reason for why it might seem this way is because they have two feeds listed in iTunes. And one of those feeds is dead. It looks like they are no longer updating that one, but they're updating the other one. So you have to simply subscribe to the correct RSS feed, um, start iTunes, go to the music store, um, select podcasts, and then their search for project hell the two words, project and hell.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:57):
Uh, you'll get the, the top two are project management project from hell. And the second one is simply project from hell subscribed to the second one. The one that is called project from hell. And then your once again, up to date with the project from hell podcast. Uh, I also wanted to apologize for last week's show. You may have noticed that there were about six minutes of silence at the end of the show. No idea how that happened and sorry about that today. I'm trying to increase that to 25 minutes. No, just kidding. Uh, I'd like to see that I get rid of that this time. I'm finally here in the announcements again, a sponsor. Does your company have a project management tool, project management goal book, or a project management seminar to promote, then why not become a sponsor of this show here? The project management podcast, being a sponsor of the project management podcast will immediately get your message into the ears of thousands of project managers worldwide at a cost, which is much lower than what you would have to pay for an ad in a trade magazine. Simply write to me at pmpodcastatgmail.com and I'll be happy to discuss a sponsorship with you. Well, that's about it for the announcements this week, and now we're moving on to the helpful resources and the project management news.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:39):
Today's helpful. Resources are all about project management methodologies because I have received the following email. Hello from Madrid, Spain. I do enjoy your show. Keep up the good and entertaining work. My question is as follows, I have a client medium-sized multinational and am focusing on organizational issues. I have discovered that project management skills are sorely needed also, and not surprisingly, the company has not adapted any project management methodology. I am now looking for a hint on which methodology would be a good candidate to look at with the following criteria, not overly bureaucratic, reasonably compact, well suited for business projects because engineering and it is not a primary focus. And hopefully the study materials templates are available at a reasonable cost, both in the United States and Europe. And this email came to me from mr. Etienne Downwire manic from well Madrid, Spain. Well, at the end, you will find that I have listed five resources for you today.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:59):
The first one is a link to various white papers and articles on project management methodologies. You may simply want to want to go through those and check them out and see what you can find about project management methodologies. In theory, the second link that I have for you is a link to the 10 step project management methodology. I think I've mentioned 10 step quite a few times here. They are a no nonsense, easy to implement project management methodology. The third link is to method one, two, three, also a project management methodology that you may want to look into. Then the fourth one here is a link to project smart project. Smart is a website where you will also find several project management templates, some of which are free, and you may want to check out the free templates and then see if it's, if it looks like something that you may want to go with.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:06):
And finally, I found some deliverables, project plans and checklists free for download on Gantt had. So that's the fifth link that I have for you in my helpful resources there. Of course, the big problem always is that many of these methodologies are well a collection of templates and the processes is a completely different issue because just introducing the templates in a company is one thing, but introducing the processes, making the company change, ready, making them aware of the fact that, well, we need to change everything that we do and follow certain project management processes. That's really the big work. So whether or not your project management methodology is simple and easy or large and convoluted, doesn't really matter. The issue usually in my experience is the fact that the companies are simply not ready to take that step and make the change. But if your company is ready, the one that you're currently consulting with, then these five links should at least give you a starting point towards these project management methodologies. Well, and that's the resources for you, particularly at TN this week. And now on with the news,
Cornelius Fichtner (08:41):
The first news item is almost a continuation of the resources for Etienne. The title of this one here is Hill consulting launches, a new project management methodology and a free offer. Well, pure coincidence, a this was published on the 10th of February, 2006, and it talks about the fact that Hill, the Hill consulting group, and now announced that they are going to release the, um, their matrix based methodology for project management called project prison. And it consists of, uh, three components, which they say facilitate the methodology implementation and use. And they are a project management process guide, a complete and comprehensive compilation of essential project management processes. Well, the issue that I talked about, that's what you really need. Then the second one is a project management practice guide, a presentation of concepts and models that help users to perform the prescribed processes. And the third one is a project management toolkit, a tool set for performing each process step. So you know, that essential actions are being performed and managed, and they're releasing this and they're doing a few workshops. They are in Chicago, Charlotte and Orlando here in the United States. Well, that's not going to help at yen in Spain a lot, but at these three workshops, they're actually giving away the complete project prism methodology package to the attendees. So if you're in any of these three towns and you're looking for a methodology yourself, well, why not join this workshop and get it for free
Cornelius Fichtner (10:35):
Only two news items today. And the second one here is from February the eighth and it's titled hand soft releases next gen game project management update. Well, this was very interesting for me because I had never expected that project management for gaming software next generation gaming software actually exists that there is a particular market for well project management software for games. Very interesting little read here. They also say that they have various industries that actually use their software telecom. It consulting have discovered the benefits of their software here by hand soft, but they're still focusing on the gaming industry because that's where they have a big foothold. So interesting to see that they're ER, very small niches that companies use to produce project management software.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Show notes: Our main focus today is on Soft Skills. What they are, how they will help you become a better PM and how to improve your own set of soft skills. Two resources I mention for soft skills are Monster.com's soft skill "Quiz" and a whitepaper titled Accommodating Soft Skills in Software Project Management. Find them in the Helpful Resources below. A special hello and congratulations goes to my friend Thomas Schmidt in Germany who passed his PMP exam last week.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 18. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 4th of February, 2006. And today I'll be getting soft on you because the main segment of the show is about soft skills in my announcements. Let me start out with iTunes to be precise, the iTunes review section and my thanks. Go to OC Rob D for writing a great review about the project management podcast and giving me four out of five stars in the iTunes podcast directory. Thank you very much. If any of you listeners out there would also like to write a quick review and give me your rating on the show. Um, go to the music store and iTunes, find my podcast and click on the right review link, which you can see on the right hand side.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:26):
I have again received some wonderful listener feedback this time from Anthony Blore out of Manchester. And he thanks me for my great podcast here. And every email I get with constructive criticism and constructive feedback like Ks is encouraging me to continue the show. So please keep your emails coming. I really enjoy them well about sponsorship again here, does your company have a project management tool or maybe a project management book, project management seminar to promote well then why not become a sponsor of the project management podcast? Being a sponsor of the show will immediately get your message into the ears of thousands of project managers worldwide at a cost, which is definitely lower than what you would pay for an ad in a trade magazine. Simply write to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'll be happy to discuss a sponsorship with you. And finally, I wanted to send congratulations to my friend Thomas Schmidt in Germany, who recently passed his PMP certification. So you got to that's your own Thomas. Alright, and now let us move on to the two segments, helpful resources and project management in the news.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:06):
I have four resources for you today. The first one is from Sabrina Mancini Johnson. If you recall, she was my interview guest last week on the show, and this one is straight from her website and it's a two page PDF document titled the top 10 characteristics of a successful project manager and a, well, this is, this is quite a good document. If you need to tell people what it is that you're actually doing, or if HR and your company is looking for project managers, if your boss's boss's boss is telling you, what does a project manager do? I mean, take out this document and give it to them because it gives kind of the great overview of, of what it is that we project managers really do. I mean, it's not the Gantt charts and making sure that deadlines are met. It, it it's inspiration have a shared vision.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:10):
It's a good communicator. You need integrity, empathy, competence, team building skills. All of these items are very neatly explained here on these two pages from Sabrina. The second helpful resource I have for you or I have for myself actually this week around is a document from project. Perfect. It's a part one of two. Unfortunately it's only part one at the moment and it's called developing a test strategy. One of my projects has recently just gone into the testing phase or will a in a couple of days actually, and this would have been great if I had had this a about three weeks ago. And of course I would need both the part Walnut part two. This has been written by Neville turbot from project. Perfect. I think we've, uh, I've mentioned him three or four times already here. So he's, he's producing rather good content.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:07):
And this is a humongously long document on how to develop a test strategy. This is good. If you have time on your project, if you can really focus on creating a test strategy, how you want to test things, who's going to test things, what environments you're going to test this on, what the test scripts are going to be, what are you going to do for retesting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a excellent template. If you wish for anybody who needs to develop a test strategy. In my case, I looked at it and I thought, wow, would have been great. If, if the previous project manager on my project here had, had used this and had created something useful like that, in my case, my test strategy is about five sentences and a and a table in length. So yeah, I wish I wish I had had this a few weeks ago.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:59):
The third helpful Reese's the resource I have for you is it's from comp T I a and it's titled the comp T I a project plus glossary of project management terms. This is a 16 page document, which contains well, yeah, a glossary of project management terms. For instance, what is performance reporting? Just picking one here, reporting to the stakeholders, to provide information about the project status, progress, accomplishments, and future project performance predictions. Lots of PS here. Well, this document is a good alternative resource for, shall we say to PMBOK, it's not an exhaustive as the glossary of terms in the PMBOK. The PMBOK is 44 pages in total focusing of course, on PMBOK terms. I assume Prince 2 has, has a similar glossary, but what I found is that these 16 pages here, the language is less complicated. You actually understand what they're talking about.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:08):
It's easier to comprehend. So my, my idea here is if you're looking for an explanation of a term, yes, use the PMBOK, use the Prince 2 glossary. Also use the white man's comparative glossary. If you remember max wideman.com , I really raved about his website and he also has a, has a glossary there. So use these glossaries that are out there and also use this comp Tia project management glossary in order to figure out what are these terms. If you have to explain it to somebody, the PMBOK Prince 2, they are more focused on the technical aspects. And this one here is, is, is simple, easy language. The fourth and final helpful resource I have for you today is something for beginners. It is part four of about dot coms, project management, one Oh one part four is talking about managing costs, money and profits.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:10):
And it's a very easy to read for beginners explanation on how to manage costs, money and profits on your project. The first three, um, items in this series here are part one overview of project management. Of course, part two was talking about managed resources and part three talked about managing time. I do not know where they're going in the future with this, but, uh, this is definitely going to be something because about.com keeps their content online forever and ever. So in five, six years, if you have something that you need to give to a beginner, this is, this is still great content that you can do. Also at the end of each page, they have suggested reading. They have related articles and even most popular videos, but I'm not sure if online music stores is something that we really need as project managers. So there you have it, the four helpful resources of this week. And now let's continue with the news.
Cornelius Fichtner (09:23):
I have six news items for you today. The first three I'm going to focus on on the last three, I'm just going to skim over quickly. First one is titled UCI Irvine's extensions, advanced project management simulation course offers chance to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah goes on and on and on has a humongously long title. But what it basically boils down to the UCI, the university of California, Irvine is offering an online project management course, big deal. You may say, well, it is for me because I am now on the UC I's advisory committee for project management. And we're going to have our first meeting on February the seventh. And I'm going to give you a little bit of feedback there. What it's like to work together with a university, uh, on their advisory committee, on project management, I'm actually looking forward to this. So it was interesting for me to see that they're actually putting out press releases for all of their, uh, project management seminars that they have. The second news item is titled business consultant. Wyrick Penn's book on project management. Well, that's really nothing new. There are dozens of books on project management out there, but, um, he is actually taking the apprentice project runway and trading spaces. Television shows here in the United States. And he is saying that well, if you're watching these shows, you're actually getting a lesson in project management. So very interesting to take the idea that what you see in a television show is project management and writing a book on it.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Unfortunately, the template we mention in the interview is no longer available. We tried everything to obtain a copy as soon as we noticed, but unfortunately none of our listeners or Sabrina had kept a copy. Also, Sabrina's email address is no longer working and has been removed.
Today, the Project Management Podcast is featuring an interview with Sabrina Mancini from 2EnVision, Inc. We are talking about how to turn the search for your next job into a project. With templates, deliverables and all. Contact Sabrina at [email address removed] to receive a copy of the templates. (Note: as of 2007-04-11, her email is no longer working and we have no newer email.)
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 17. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this should have been the project management podcast for the 21st of January, 2006. Unfortunately, after moving into my new home and took my internet provider 13 days until the 24th of January, 2006, to hook me back up. So now this is the project management podcast for the 24th of January, 2006. And today you will get to hear the interview with Sabrina Mancini Johnson, about how to use your project management skills in your job search. Let's get started with two announcements and some reader feedback, and then we will move right into that interview. The first announcement is about the schedule. I'm continuing to be a little bit more involved with moving into my new house.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:20):
So the next show is one and a half weeks from today on the 4th of February. So no show this coming Saturday, but Saturday in a week, announcement. Number two is about sponsorship. Does your company have a project management tool, a project management book or seminar to promote, then why not become a sponsor of the project management podcast? Being a sponsor of the podcast will immediately get your message into the ears of thousands of project managers worldwide at a cost that is much lower than what you would have to pay for an ad in a trade magazine. Simply write to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'll be happy to discuss a sponsorship with you. Lastly, before we move on to the main section of the show, I have some listener feedback for you, which was posted by an anonymous listener on the blog on the website. And it's about my review that I did.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:27):
I think it was in a last show about bark world. They had a, it's a podcast called blogworld.com and they had a show on project manager and the listener writes, the guys at bog world are great and I listened to all their podcasts. However, their podcast on project management for web management was almost useless. They were both very flippant and seem to talk more about using Microsoft project than any formal framework or supporting material that is to say risk business cases, communications, contingency, et cetera. The review, the feedback goes on to say that web based projects now make a clear difference to the presentation and marketing of a company. I would have thought that they would have put more effort into this podcast, but it wasn't near Christmas at the time. If the guys at BlogWorld read this, or of course now hear this, I'm afraid, guys, you missed a great opportunity to sing the virtues of proper project management practice and provide some key tips and methods, especially where consultants are concerned.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:42):
That's about this review that I did on bog world.com. Well, to me, I still stand to what I said. I liked the, the feeling of what they did on that show because my experience as a project manager in web development was that it was always hectic. Always things were falling left and right. So the show that they did actually represented my experience, but it seems that this listener here has a completely different experience about project management in web development. I've been out of it for three years, Bre quite possible that things have changed in there. The listener finishes his review by writing, and now comes the usual slap on the back for you. Well done, great podcast. And by the way, it was me who went on about reading out too many emails about how great your podcast is. So you can skip reading this paragraph loops. Okay. I shouldn't have read that. Well, let's move on to the interview then with Sabrina Mancini Johnson,
Announcer (05:00):
The project management podcast feature interview today with the Sabrina Mancini Johnson, [inaudible] incorporated
Sabrina Mancini (05:14):
Ladies and gents today with me, I have Sabrina Manzini Johnson, and we will be talking about how to turn your career search into a project as you project managers should welcome to the show. Sabrina, thank you very much, Cornelius. Since we will be talking about the job search, let me start out by asking the question that everybody hears in their job interview. Tell me a little bit about yourself to ref back. Uh, my name is Sabrina Manzini Johnson. I am a local Southern California native. I have the pleasure of having two small children and also two wonderful Cocker Spaniels who I call family and a wonderful husband. And we live down here in beautiful Southern California at the same time beyond my family. I've been in the world of it, project management for nearly two decades now, which probably gives my years away to everybody out there in the listening world.
Sabrina Mancini (06:12):
You started with punch cards. I started out, uh, just at the time of punch cards. Let's just say I started off in those cold rooms. And so I'm along with the world of project management and being a full time. Mom, I am also actively involved in my civic interests in my community. And that's a little bit about me as a person. And what about to envision inc? How did that come about? Yes. To envision inc. As the name of our recently formed company, we incorporated as a California company in 2004 to envision inc uh, started off as a company in which after leaving the full time project management and it leadership world. I decided to go back to my consulting roots and create a professional services organization that catered to small enterprise project management, uh, projects, um, out of that, um, my husband and I own the company.
Sabrina Mancini (07:11):
So that's where you find the play on the number two. And we wanted to set up a company that was very forthright within the values of integrity. And so we started thinking of envisioning what we wanted to do. And we came up with the name to envision we've since grown into also having a staffing division that caters to project management. And we're enjoying our second year of existence, but only it project management it and business project management. And you'd be amazed how many requests we get for non it project managers? Yes, that's interesting because the PMI IOC here in Southern California, we have about 60% of it project managers. So is it changing again? There's the need going back to more non it projects? I think that there's definitely a, uh, a margin of project management that caters to the back office back office systems, the HR or the ERP, um, somewhat of the training and e-learning as well.
Sabrina Mancini (08:15):
And we're also seeing that there's a different variance and the interest of project managers by County, Riverside County being very strong with more of your manufacturing, semiconductors, um, and also some of our out of state requests that we get that are also, uh, certainly within the world of aerospace and or other types of industries out of, uh, out of state. How far out of state do you go right now? We have extended ourselves into the Texas area and we're partnering with some business in Texas and we're trying to take it slow and steady trying to have our focus more here in the Southern California LA area, but as the needs arise, we do certainly move into that direction.
Cornelius Fichtner (09:00):
Alright. Okay. So that was a little bit about yourself. Let's move over to your templates. Now, when I first met you, that was at the networking evening that we had on November 16th, I think. And you can give a 90 minute presentation titled project managing your career search. Um, what prompted you to choose that topic?
Sabrina Mancini (09:24):
Well, a fellow peer of mine that was heading up the career nights had asked me to be a guest speaker. And, um, she had really kind of asked me to come up with something that was unique after all. It was the closure of this, uh, experience in this career night. And I think that she was concerned that maybe everybody had heard everything already once or 10 times. Um, so it, wasn't a very hard for me to come up with this concept, being that, as I was speaking to people who were perhaps career searching, I really wanted to cater to something that really inherently hit home. And that was a fact that project managers need to address their career search. Just like a project that you construct with an initiation phase and post execution phase. Right. And I thought we don't do this very well as project managers. We think that there's some other magic to doing projects outside of our day to day world, but there is no magic. And so I wanted to show that you can apply the same methodologies we use in business towards your personal career search, or maybe a project that you may be having in some other capacity in your personal life. I definitely found that it was unique. I mean, I was sitting there. I was listening to you. I was thinking, Oh my God, this is so new. This is so
Cornelius Fichtner (10:48):
Different. That's why I ask you to be here now, do you know, do you know if anybody has actually used them
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Show notes: Listener Harry Fisher submitted an overview of his Groupware Solutions project to The Project Management Podcast and we are happy to feature him today. Listener Michael Witt submitted today's helpful resource and the new year brings several excellent items in the News segment to project managers. The show ends with a review of an episode of Boagworld, where Paul Boag discusses Project Management with Marcus Lillington.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:09): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 16. I am Cornelius Fichnter. Now this is the project management podcast for the 7th of January, 2006. Happy new year to all of you. I am very glad to tell you that today's main show segment comes from Harry Fisher, who is a listener like you, and decided to send me his input. A couple of announcements here to get us started. First of all, uh, we are still on a two week schedule, so there is no show next week. And then there is one the week after that. Also, I promise to you in the last show that today we would have an interview for you on how to manage your job search as a project. Well, I had to change some scheduling around and you will get to hear that particular interview into weeks down the road. And now a word from our sponsor project load is the web based project management tool for your team. As project manager, you create the tasks and assign activities as your team progresses. Their time sheets automatically feed into project reports with task forecasting documents, storage, integrated notes, and over 25 alerts project load is the one tool for project monitoring. Visit us at projectload.com
Music (01:59): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (01:59):
Today I have one helpful resource from you and this one was sent to me from Mikael Vitz. He is a project manager for sun Frankfurt, and he writes, I Cornelius my project management colleagues, and I are certified as Prince 2 practitioners. We adapted Prince 2 here at sun Microsystems in Germany. In your last podcast, you discussed status reports. I Googled and found a Prince two templates set, including status reports. We adapted these templates within our company, best wishes to California. Well, everybody go and get these templates. They are an excellent starting point for anyone who needs new templates or who is in the process of updating their templates. But even if you're not go take a look, because I'm sure when you look through these templates, you'll find something useful in them and you'll go, Oh, this is, I should include that in my templates as well. Yeah. And that's the only helpful resource I have for you because there is tons of news this week and new year, lots of news. It seems so on. We go with the news.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:21):
So what do you think is going to be big in project management in 2006? Well, that's what the article here in the computer world addresses it is entitled. What's next in 2006 project management, the five biggest project challenges for 2006. This is from the 2nd of January, 2006. And they have five items that they're talking about here. The global teams, of course, we know that that's been going on for quite a while. Then they're talking about moving parts projects that are constantly influx and constantly changing. And of course, rather challenging. Then they'll talk about software development. Then the next one entering number four here is vendor partners. So working on a project management basis with vendor partners, it's going to be big. And finally, their fifth prediction is that project portfolios are going to be big in project management in 2006. Definitely an interesting read this article here.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:33):
What else do you think is hot in 2006? Well, the PMP certificate is hot in 2006 to be precise, precise, it ranks or number four on cert city's 10 hottest certifications for 2006. And this is our annual attempt to predict the certifications that will shine brightest next year. And cert cities is an online magazine for the certified it professional. They write PMI's PMP title also made a strong showing this year, rising from its debut. Stop at number 10 last year. Thanks to in part thanks in part to even a stronger buzz for this industry neutral title within the it community. So if you haven't got your PMP yet, well, think about it.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:33):
Are you a work break down structure guru? If so, then the PMI is looking for your help. This article here is from Thursday, December 29th, and it's titled PMI seeks input to practice standard for work breakdown structure until the January deadline 2006, the PMI makes the latest work breakdown, structure, practice standard available to everybody in the world on their website. Well, you have to sign up and sign 25 disclaimers, et cetera, but you have the opportunity to give your input into the WBS practice standards. So if you're a WBS guru, go and give the PMI a hand And we're ending today's news with two that come from the far side of the news, really the first one is entitled. Ex-combatants train on project management and it comes to us, came to us on December 30th, 2005 from the new times in Kigali, they write child X combatants association in collaboration with the international labor organization is training ex-com battens on project management and design the ongoing 10 day training attracted 20 members from different associations funded by ILO to improve capacity building among youths who were affected by war. Interesting.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:24):
And finally, we stay on the far side of the news. FBI is looking to hire I T workers interviews for a number of it jobs begin next month, that was on the 29th of December. And they're writing here in the computer world. The FBI is looking for a few good it professionals to operate and maintain a robust, secure global it infrastructure environment for the agency in announcement last week, the agency said that it's seeking to fill critical it positions, including computer scientists, computer engineers, it specialists. And of course it, project managers annual pay for the positions range from 35,000 to 135,000 us dollars, not bad based on experience and qualifications with recruitment bonuses, for the candidates who possess the most critical skills. The FBI said, okay, why not become an agent project manager? And that's the helpful resource and news for this week as always, if you want to read up on any of the resources or news in detail, just go to a PM podcast.blogspot.com, where you will find links to each individual item that I have just mentioned. And now the project management podcasts, project
Cornelius Fichtner (08:56):
Management tip of the week,
Music (09:20): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (09:20):
The project management podcasts tip of the week is divide your projects into phases. Now let's begin at the beginning. What's a phase. What's the definition? Well, the PMBOK defines a phase as a collection of logically related project activities. Usually culminating in the completion of a major deliverable project phases are mainly completed sequentially, but can overlap in some project situations. Phases can be subdivided into sub phase it phases and then into components and so on. It goes on and on and on, but doesn't really tell you what the benefits are of dividing your project into phases. Well, it's quite simple. It makes it easier to manage your project, both planning and estimating because instead of having one large lump of work, if you divide your project into phases, you end up with smaller, more manageable pieces of work. And personally, I like to subdivide these phases into steps.
Cornelius Fichtner (10:34):
So let's say if we're talking about the implementation of some, some software piece, I'm saying, okay, step one in March, we'll be delivering the following features. Step two in April, you'll get these features and may you get those features? So that's, it makes it also much more understandable to the customer. If you have phases and steps, the, they understand that better. If you look at the PMI phases, their official phages are initiation, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. If you look at prints too, it's a bit different. They're talking about starting up and initiating a process planning and directing a project, managing stage boundaries and controlling a stage managing product delivery and closing a project. Those are the Prince two, uh, phases. And if you're looking at general phases, we're talking about planning, analysis, design, testing, and implementation phases. Also allow you to plan your project on a more, um, let's call it as you go basis.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Today's show contains the following show segments: Helpful Resources, News, The Tip of the Week, two Good Bad & Ugly Reviews, and in the main section of the show we are talking about Project Status Reports.
Two new Podcasts on Project Management are now available:
- The Project from Hell Saga by www.4pm.com - Estimating Technology Projects by www.ireqwire.com [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]
Project Management in the News - Managing Megaprojects - Microsoft to Acquire UMT, a Leading Provider of Portfolio Management Software and Solutions [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]
- Voice Over Project Management Software Developer Interactive Voices Announces Trial VoiceSuite Account For Clients
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:09): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 15. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 24th of December, 2005. Merry Christmas to all of you today. We'll be looking at status reports, what to write in them and what to not write in them. And we also have two reviews in the good, bad and ugly series for you on the show today. And you can consider the second one as kind of a Christmas present, because I will be reviewing two new podcasts for you. That focus solely on project management. Actually it's two and a half new podcasts for you that comes out at the end of the show, but no fast forwarding here to start out the show. Here are a few announcements and items that I want to get off my chest. And we start with a message from our sponsor project load is the web based project management tool for your team as project manager, you create the tasks and assign activities as your team progresses. Their time sheets automatically feed into project reports with task forecasting documents, storage, integrated notes, and over 25 alerts project load is the one tool for project monitoring. Visit us at projectload.com.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:54):
Eric Johnson wrote in and he writes, I graduated from Tennessee technological university with a business M I S degree in December, 2003, I started working like most new it graduates with hardware and PC support and since moved to developing applications with.net tools. My goal is to use this experience in project management in the near future project management just makes sense to me, the more I learn about it and project management, the more I see the similarities between industries and processes, I've enjoyed your reviews and explanations on PM, techniques, events, and your podcasts. In general, I feel that your site references and podcasts are a great tool for me. As I developed my plan to pursue project management as a profession, the reason why I'm actually reading this to you is because of the question which follows. And he writes Cornelius, can someone XL in project management without a PMP certification?
Cornelius Fichtner (03:03):
Or do you think it is a necessary justification to be accepted within the profession? The only reason I ask is it seems that getting a PMP certification is very trendy for lack of a better word. I do not want to jump on the bandwagon just to get a PMP because it's the thing to do. I want to be a successful project manager. If those go hand in hand, then I have no problems putting the effort forth to get one. How do you feel about this? Well, in my view, the PMP certification more or less tells me that you were able to sit down for a four hour exam and answer a certain number of questions correctly, that you have passed sort of a minimal standard in project management to even get to this level, to even be able to take the test. You had to have certain number of hours in project management, certain number of years, you had to have certain training.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:10):
So that to me just tells me where you are at in your knowhow as a PMP, as a project manager in general. It does not tell me that you are a good project manager. I mean, have you ever had a doctor, a medical doctor with whom you weren't happy? Well, it's exactly the same thing with project managers. Being a PMP only tells you that you have some sort of a certification. It doesn't tell you you're a good project manager. Yes, you can definitely be a good project manager without having the PMP certification, but having gone through the training, having taken the test gives you a common vocabulary with me. It gave us both of us, the same common understanding of the tools and techniques and processes. And if I had to choose between two people, one is a PMP and the other one is not a PMP.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:11):
I would probably focus more or lean more towards the PMP simply because I know how this person is supposed to think because of the training that went into him, uh, into, into the PMP certificate doesn't mean that he's the better project manager. I don't really know. I will learn that afterwards. What you will also find is that the PNP seems to be more or less a required item. Now in most of the job ads that you see, PMP is no longer, um, suggested PMP is required. PMP will also give you our RESPECT. It will give you the respect. It will give you the respect from the HR department simply because they are looking for that. It will give you the, from your peers, project managements like myself. And it'll give you the respect of your colleagues at work, whom you work with because they know that you have a certification in what it is that you're doing.
Cornelius Fichtner (06:11):
So there are pluses and minuses as for me, yes, getting a PMP is worthwhile simply because it puts you on a level playing field with everybody else out there. Alright, enough said about whether or not to get a PMP or not, but I found something quite interesting in the Yahoo groups. I, uh, I monitor the Prince two project management Yahoo group, occasionally, and I found the following question from Gregory Tucker. I don't exactly know what Gregory is from, but he writes, I am currently studying for the practitioner exam. That's of course the Prince 2 practitioner exam. I have taken and failed at once. Does anybody know how many practitioners there are in the United States for Prince 2? Eh, doesn't seem very popular right now in the U S but with increasing adoption of ITIL in North America, I suspect there will be a growing interest in Prince too, as well over the next few years.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:17):
Well, Greg, I don't know, but let's put this out here to the listeners. If you are a Prince two practitioner and you've taken and passed the exam, I'd appreciate it. If you would drop me a quick This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I can tell you that number, and we can announce that in the next show, you may remember in the past, I have been talking about whether or not listening to the project management podcast would qualify for PDUs. If you are a PMP you're required to obtain 60 PDUs in three years to keep your certification going. Well, I had a bit of back and forth between the PMI and myself. I didn't agree with their initial. No, you can't do this, but I have now received a clarification from Edwin Delgado and he is the continuing certification processor at the PMI. He writes, I do not doubt the content of your broadcast or the work that you must put into your lecture style broadcast that you provide to the listeners.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:29):
The real question is in regards to reporting the PDUs, how would we, the PMI possibly know that they were really listening to the whole broadcast or just part of it? How do we know that actual learning took place? There is such a thing as distant learning, but interaction between the student and the teacher is always present such as in a or over the web. If you were to provide some sort of a PDU code at the beginning and end of YouTube, your shows, who is to say that the people reporting this code listened the entire session or that they were just given the code by someone else in a classroom lecture, there would at least be a person present to verify attendance and verify that they completed the entire lecture, or course there is an actual teacher to student interaction at all times. Okay. That makes it clear. Just listening to the project management podcast does not qualify for PDUs. I would, of course have preferred that the PMI says yes, and that listening to the project management podcast is a qualifying activity for you PMPs out there who are listening to the show, but I can understand the arguments that Edwin Delgado makes, and I accept his decision. And now let us move on to that helpful resources and followed right after that, to the PM news.
Cornelius Fichtner (10:08):
I have five resources for you today, but I'm just going to breeze through to the first forum, concentrate a little more on the fifth one here today. The first two are from the same website. There's a free registration that's required in order to read those. And there are both high level overviews. The first one is a high level overview of project management offices. And the second one is a high level overview of project management methodologies. They're both kind of something that you may want to give to a manager type person who is interested in understanding more about PMOs and project management methodology. And the second one about the methodology is also quite helpful. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the basics of the PMI methodology, the third helpful resource is titled project management techniques for adaptive action. It is sort of a comparison between agile project management and also heavyweight project management as they call it.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Today's show features an interview with Robert Perrine, PMP, ITIL-SM. Robert and I met for this interview following the monthly PMI-OC Advanced Topics Seminar at which he spoke on ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library. Read up on ITIL at the British Office of Government Service [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link].
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:09): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 14. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 10th of December, 2005. And today we have a feature interview with Robert Perrine in which we will be talking about ITIL the information technology infrastructure library. To start off the show here are as always a few announcements and things I want to get off my chest. First of all, starting today, we will change to a two week release schedule until about the middle or end of January. This means that there will be no show next week. Then there will be a show. Then there will be no show. Then there will be a show. Again, the reason for that, it's quite simple.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:17):
Next week, next Saturday, I have a birthday coming up, so I wouldn't have done the show then anyway, but, uh, the reason why I'm continuing to do this until the end of January simple, I am buying a new house and, uh, yeah, that's quite a project. It's taken up a lot, a lot of my free time. So I really have to focus on that. And I'm going to change to this two week release schedule, but remember it's only until the end of January, and then we're going back to the one weeks and now a word from our sponsor project load is the web based project management tool for your team. As project manager, you create the tasks and assign activities as your team progresses, their time sheets automatically feed into project reports with task forecasting documents, storage, integrated notes, and over 25 alerts project load is the one tool for project monitoring.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:17):
Visit us at projectload.com. Now let's move on to the listener's survey. Well, I've been making this announcement several times. The listener survey is up on the blog, and if you would please give me your feedback. That would help me a lot. And today I want to tell you what I have learned from this listener survey. There are three items that I would like to read to you from which I have learned, and from which I will be improving this show, of course, I don't know who wrote them because this survey is completely anonymous, but here you go. The first one, I really like this is the best one that I've had on the survey so far. And it reads, please, please, please do not read out emails saying how fantastic this podcast is it just wastes time. Your last podcast went on for five minutes. Just reading out how wonderful it was.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:18):
Okay, it's good. But please move on. We are listening for the content. If you just read out news, et cetera, we can get that from the same sources that you do. It's not very useful. Having said that generally the rest of your podcast after the fire first five or 10 minutes of backslapping emails is great. All right. I agree with you a half way. I agree. Reading the backslapping emails. That's not really all too great, but unfortunately I don't get any others. So if you are out there and you want to write me an email that tells me how great the podcast is, please also include some real advice or maybe something from your experience as a project manager could, I can include in the podcast. So please keep your feedback coming, send me your emails, but tell the other listeners about your life. And I can stop reading all these backslapping emails.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:23):
But on the other hand, I disagree with not reading news because other feedback on the survey told me quite clearly, that news is liked. People are listening to the news that are eat here, so I will continue to do this, but I will try and stop to read the backslapping emails. The second feedback from the listener survey was as follows. Great show, that best podcast I listened to. Okay. Some backslapping here. Once again, I have only one remark. Could you please reduce the volume of the sound of the typewriter between your news items? It really gives me a headache. Apart from that, the sound quality is superb. I've been wondering about that myself, because I personally thought that it was a bit loud, but nobody complained. So I kept it at that starting today, the sound of the typewriter is going down and the third and last feedback from the listener survey is quite short. All it reads is where were you? 20 years ago? Well, simple 20 years ago, I was a 22 year old software developer. And I couldn't have helped you in project management at all. It took me 20 years to come this far. Alright, so much for the listener survey here and now let us move on to the helpful resources.
Cornelius Fichtner (06:01):
I have five resources for you today. The first is of course, connected to the interview that you will hear shortly. And it is the handout from Robert Perrine about his ITIL presentation, which he gave this month for the project management Institute, orange County chapter. And you can download that from his website. The link is of course, on the blog at pmpodcastdotblogspot.com. You can find the other for help for resources at exactly the same location. And the second resource I have for you is an article slash white paper that I found on Gantthead .com and it is entitled the Estimation Blues. And it is quite a nice overview of the troubles that we as project managers run into when we have to estimate and they give you a quite lovely solution there as well. Next, we have 10 things to ponder when implementing an integrated portfolio management application. This is a paper which was written by David L. Davis, a white paper.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:25):
Really, it is a very quick read that you can probably spend five minutes on and you get the gist of it all. And it is an absolutely wonderful start. If you are actually thinking about integrating, implementing an integrated portfolio management application. So this is a really, really nice place to start with this. The next one here is for all you project management beginners out there, and it is called how to teach yourself about project management, without spending any money on training and consultants. This comes to us from the website of Michael Greer and printed out it's about three pages long, and it's a list of ideas, suggestions, and links, where to go to and where to learn about the basics of project management. So this is a really great place to start. If you are looking for something basic for junior project manager, or if you're just starting in project management.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:32):
So check this one out. And lastly, we're going even lower than just the beginning project management. We are going to project management for school kids. Now this one is really good for all you project managers out there who have kids in school and they have a school project coming up well. And then you suddenly realize that, you know what, even though I've been talking in at home about project management to my family for the last, what five, 10 years, it looks to me like my kids really don't know what project management is and how to manage their own school projects, you know, set it up planet, have deadlines, have time assigned to it. This overview is written by Neville Turbit and it gives all you project managers with children out there at great start on how to get your knowhow to them so that they can apply this project management experience in their school projects. And that's about it for the helpful resources this week. Now let's move on to one news item that I have found for you this week.
Cornelius Fichtner (09:58):
Well, actually there were more than just this one news item this week, but I felt that they were also insignificant that I just let them fly by the, this one here is from the 5th of December, 2005, and it is titled Sao Paolo. PMI conference brings together PMI UNESCO and the children of Brazil. Now this is really not all too much to do with project management. And it is more about project managers going out into the community and doing something for the community. At large, you may know that the PMI currently has a conference in Sao Paolo, or by this time it's actually over and at the end of the Sao Paolo conference, which we had a great attendance, by the way, they brought in child hope, which is also known as the children and hope national compare campaign. It is a UNESCO program, which is designed to country amongst other things to contribute to the elimination of child labor. To me, this particular piece of news is just some way that we as project managers, even locally can do something for the community at large. So if you're a member of a professional organization in your area, think about doing something like this, like the Sao Paolo chapter has done and do something good for the community. Don't always think about project management. Think about the community at large as well.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
The main focus of today's show is the continuation of what we started two weeks ago when we looked at an overview of what project management methodologies are. Today, I am giving you a high level overview of several of these methodologies. You'll also get to hear several new helpful resources and news items.
Note: In the podcast we say that you cannot claim PDUs for listening to podcasts. However, that was in 2005. In the meantime PMI has "come around" and today the word "podcast" is even mentioned in PMI's PDU category structure. So it is now OK to claim free PDUs for listening: See www.project-management-podcast.com/pdu
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:00:00): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 13. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 3rd of December, 2005. And today we will continue on the road down towards project management methodology. Today, it's going to be a high level overview of several popular project management methodologies, and like every week to start out the show, here are a few announcement and things that I want to get off my chest. And we'll start out with a word from our sponsor.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:01:04):
Project load is the web based project management tool for your team as project manager, you create the tasks and assign activities as your team progresses. Their time sheets automatically feed into project reports with task forecasting documents, storage, integrated notes, and over 25 alerts project load is the one tool for project monitoring. Visit This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Yeah. If you remember last week, I spoke about the listener's survey and if you listen to and like the project management podcast, and you're obviously listening to him now, then I'd appreciate it. If you could take a few moments and go to the blog and click on the listener survey link, it'll take about three minutes for you to fill out the 10 questions. And one of the requests that I've already seen in the survey is that you would like more tips to me that means more short and easy to implement tips.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:02:09):
Those of you who listen all the way to the end of the show, you know, that I always throw in a quick joke and a little nugget of wisdom ride at the end of the show. Um, yeah, that's actually the tip there, but the feedback here tells me that more tips like that are needed. And that is why I am now thinking about introducing a new show segment called the project management tip of the week. That's going to be a short one to two minutes segment with a quick tip that you can easily use and implement. So you can see that your voice actually counts. And I listened to you and you can look out for this project management tip of the week, coming your way in a couple of shows down the road. So if you want to improve the show, if you want to have voice heard, please help improve the program and fill in the survey that I have for you.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:03:06):
I have also put up a press release. If you go to the blog, you will find a short and a long version of this press release. And I would very much appreciate it. If you could use that press release in your newsletter, be printed or an electronic format, or maybe even a, if you have a new section on your website, post my press release, that would help me to push out the information about the show and a very special, thank you goes to the PMI Alaska chapter because they have not only put the press release. Actually they did not put the press release onto their website. They did since even something even much better, they put a link to my podcast onto their website. The complete RSS feed is actually visible on their website and right there on the front page, plus they have included a short blurb about the project management podcast in the electronic newsletter.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:04:13):
So thank you very much. PMI, Alaska chapter, and a similar thank you goes to Silvio, skip box on from Brazil. And he writes to me, I added your link in my message this week to the PMI Sao Paolo chapter. We have more than 1600 members in Sao Paulo. I am sure Renato Feccine. The president of the chapter may contact you for more information, many PMs in Brazil, speak English, and we'll be interested. Congratulations for your excellent job. And please, if you can continue with, can continue with this work that I know is very hard. Please keep the blog and the podcast updated. It is a valued source of information for all of us project managers. Well Silvio. I really appreciate anything you, everything that you did in order to get my podcast message out in Brazil. And of course, all of those of you out there who are going to use either the short or the long version of the press release.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:05:25):
Thank you very much for helping me to get the word out there now onto some more reader feedback that I have received over the last two weeks. The first one here comes from Paulo Cush. He writes, I am a listener from Porto Portugal, and I really enjoy your show. I would like to ask you for some advice, he then goes into a long, long question about setting up a PMO, and I'm going to be answering that question to him offline here. And he ends by saying, and I liked that very much, very much here. Once again. I really enjoy your show. I am looking forward to the one hundreds show. Well, so am I, it's a long way to go here. We have 87 shows to go until we will be at show number 100, but I am looking forward to doing it. My second reader feedback is from Greg Simarusti.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:06:29):
I hope I haven't mispronounced that name too much, Greg. He writes I'm a member of the PMI-OC, that is a in fact, the PMI chapter of which I am a member of as well here in orange County in California. So he goes on and I have met you on several occasions. Don't remember it. Sorry, Greg. My mind seems to be going. I congratulate you on your podcast and look forward to future recordings. I was just wondering if there is a problem with the podcast server for the last two days, I have been trying to download the last six episodes. I have the first seven and was wondering if there may be a server problem. Well, I haven't noticed anything. I see that the downloads continue to go up and up every day, but, uh, what do I know, maybe there are in fact issues out there.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:07:26):
So if there is anybody else out there who has download problems, please send me an email because if there is a real outage, then I would like to make sure that this gets fixed as soon as possible. Third and last reader feedback here comes from Sean Howell. Unfortunately, I don't know where Sean is from. He writes your podcast is quite well done and I enjoy listening to them. I am a contract junior project manager currently working in on process improvement and integration. Can you talk about your view about how being a process manager relates to being a project manager? I think that would be an interesting show. I betted would a, what I'm going to do folks is I'm going to get in touch with Sean. I'm going to find out from Shawn, his views on process management. And I am going to get you some feedback on this here so much for the reader feedback.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:08:32):
I really appreciate all the letters that I'm getting here. And I promise I'm trying to get all of you. Write to me on the air here on the show. I have also received some feedback from the PMI regarding my question, whether listening to the project management podcast is a qualifying activity. So can a PMP, who's listening to this show claim. PDUs the response I have received came from Edwin Delgado. He writes though, I believe that your podcast may provide information regarding project management and that spreading the word through a broadcast like yours may be a great platform to spread the word of project management. There is no way for anyone listening to your program to report this for PDUs. Also, your podcast would not fall under category. Number four, as this category is reserved for structured PM courses and not a media source. All right, to me at this point, this means that if you are a PMP and you are listening regularly to the project management podcast, you cannot claim this as a qualifying activities for gaining PDUs.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
The main focus of today's show is the continuation of what we started two weeks ago when we looked at an overview of what project management methodologies are. Today, I am giving you a high level overview of several of these methodologies. You'll also get to hear several new helpful resources and news items.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:10):
[inaudible] you are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at PM. podcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to PM This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 12. I am Cornelius fish. Now this is the project management podcast for the 19th of November, 2005. And today we'll be looking at goals why you need them and how to set them right as every week to start out the show, a few announcements and things I want to get off my chest. Let me start out with the listener survey. If you listen, and like the project management podcast, then I would appreciate to hear your feedback. I have put a link onto my blog, which will take you to the listener survey, and I would very much appreciate it. If you would take three minutes out of your time and answer 10 questions for me, there are point and click questions.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:22):
It shouldn't take you really more than three minutes with those 10 questions, I will be able to get to know my listenership a little bit better, and I will be able to focus more on what you want and improve the quality of the program here and now a word from our sponsor. This episode of the project management podcast is sponsored by project load. Project load is a web based project management and time tracking tool, project load lets teams maintain and forecast their own tasks helps project managers track their projects, gives PMOs one place to view all projects and provides executives, valuable insight into exactly where their organization is spending their time. You can find project This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. next, a couple of followups from last week show. First of all, there is Harry Fisher. If you listened to last week's show you would've heard the piece from Harry Fisher about workflow.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:27):
And he tells me that the article on which he based that particular piece, that was his article. Um, I said it would, wasn't published in the ASQ quality project magazine. That is of course the ASQ quality progress magazine. Well, yeah, that's an easy mistake for a project manager to make. And he also wanted me to mention that he is currently the quality assurance manager for Whitman heart interactive. I also got some feedback from Ethan Johnson, who is the man behind the vision thing, the podcast, or other the episode of the podcast, which I reviewed last week. Ethan left a comment on my blog and he obviously wasn't all too happy about the fact that I called the audio quality bad. Ethan would have preferred the word crunk. Well, the segment is called the good, the bad and the ugly. And if you remember, I believe I called the content very good.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:36):
And I called the audio quality bad. And I am sticking to that. I still think that the audio quality of that particular episode was bad, but the quality of the content was excellent. If you want to read his full response, you can go to the blog where he left his comment. And then we also have some reader feedback here. This one comes from a Nigel Jones and he writes, hi, Cornelius, I'm Nigel Jones. And I am based in the UK in Scotland. Actually I have recently found your podcast and have been listening on my daily jog with my iPod. So we have somebody who jogs to it. We have somebody who does his morning exercises with it. It seems to be a popular sports pots podcast here. He continues. I have to keep extending my wrongs as the PM podcast seems to be getting longer and longer.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:36):
I think I'm up to your 10th podcast now, and I really liked them. Good content and easy listening. And I can tell that you give an honest opinion when you comment on and critique something, keep up the good work. Thank you very much, Nigel. And I really hope that at some point, you're going to have to run a marathon here to listen to my show in its entirety. I will try and keep it between 30 minutes and an hour in the future. No worries there. And those are about all the announcements and things I wanted to get off my chest today. Today's show marks the start of a new segment called helpful resources. When I come across good articles or presentations or white papers or whatever, I deem a helpful resource. I am going to mention it here on the show. And today I have four resources for you.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:49):
The first helpful resource is a article, which I have found in the computer world, Canada. And it's actually an older one and it's from the year 2002, but, uh, it still has value. It is titled, there is a reason why IT PMOs fail and it was written by Ken Handley. And the reason why I mentioned it as simple, because he more or less repeats what I said in my show about PMOs, a few shows back. He says that the trick to make a PMO successful is giving the people who are actually doing the project tools that work, do that. And the project team will beat a path to the PMO door exactly what I'm saying, make it helpful to people, and they will come to you. The next helpful resource is entitled next generation PMO. If you build it, will they come?
Cornelius Fichtner (06:57):
And this is a presentation in PDF form by Jack Doggle from the project ties group. And, uh, in it, uh, slide number 10. He has an overview between traditional PMOs and next generation PMOs. And this is actually the one thing that I find very interesting here. So go on, read this a PDF document and particularly focused on slide number 10, to see the difference between a traditional PMO and what he calls a next generation PMO. The third and final article here about PMOs is entitled top 10 tips to building an effective program management office, follow the steps, steps to ensure your PMOs success. This is written by Steven C. Howald, and he writes this on the chief project officer website that is chief project officer.com. And it's quite a interesting article. It's very well written. You won't find much here that you haven't read in other articles that talk about the top 10 tips to building an effective program management office.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:17):
But I find that it's very crisply written and a good resource for all of us who work in PMOs. And finally, what I have found here is a free 26 project managers desk reference. Yes. And what could be better as a helpful resource than a project manager's desk reference. This is forum 4:00 PM. You can find them at fourpm.com and, uh, well, unfortunately I haven't actually been able to look at it because it is a PDF document, obviously 26 pages long, but it requires Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or later. And I have been so lazy with installing Acrobat readers on my system that I still have 5.0. And, uh, well, um, I hope it's a good reference that I'm giving you here folks. So those of you who go and check it out, please drop me a line and tell me if this was worth putting in the helpful references section here. Again, you will find links to these helpful resources on my blog, and now let's move right on to the news in project management of this week.
Cornelius Fichtner (09:45):
First news item this week is from Friday, the 18th of November, 2005. And this is about a birthday. So I'm going to have to sing. Now, [inaudible] Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear IPMA happy birthday to you. And now, you know why I talk in front of the microphone and not sing? Yes, the IP M a D international project management association has celebrated its 40th anniversary. And as you may remember, they're currently having a Congress in new Delhi, and this is where they did it. Here's a little bit of a history that they mentioned about the IPMA in 1965, a few project management, enthusiastic in the heart of Europe joined together and started a discussion group of managers of international projects. The first international Congress was held in 1967 in Vienna with participation from 30 different countries. The group developed from the discussion group to an organization, which was for years known as internet time changed. And in 1994, internet became the international project management association. So once again, happy birthday. IPMA
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Following the news, there are three segments in today's episode: Harry Fisher (author of Microsoft Visual Basic.Net) recounts his experience and success in implementing a workflow tool. We'll take a Tour de Project Management Methodologies and I give you my review of The Vision Thing Podcast [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link.].
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:10):
[inaudible] you are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to pm This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 11. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the project management podcast for the 12th of November, 2005. And today we are going to be looking at an overview of project management methodologies to start out. The show is every week, here are a few announcements and just things I want to get off my chest. First of all, reader feedback. Many of you have been writing to me over the past few weeks and making suggestions to part towards possible topics that I could talk about here. Theory of constraints, critical chain, how to balance several large projects simultaneously. You name it. I can promise you that I am going to try and get all of your requests into the show into time, but please remember that project management is a very vast field and there is a lot that I can cover here and that a lot that I want to cover.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:31):
So I will not be able to get to your subject within the next one to two weeks. Give me some time. And I'm sure that we are going to cover here. The topic that interests you. I also wanted to mention again, that this is not a PMP exam preparation podcast. If you are listening to this podcast and you are currently studying for the PMP exam, and you're trying to pass the PMP exam, please don't listen to this show and hope to learn something that will help you to pass. You see, in order to pass the exam, I really suggest that you attend a PMP preparation seminar that is offered by either your local PMI chapter or by one of the many, many professional or for profit. Shall we say training organizations out there? There are also quite a few excellent online training courses and self study books that you can use, but this podcast, however, is definitely not the way to go.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:41):
It's not going to help you and not going to give you any support in passing the PMP exam. Some of you have also been writing to me and ask whether or not listening to the project management podcast is a qualifying activity to gain professional development units, stats PDUs. And if you are a PMP, you know that every three years you have to gain 60 PDUs in order to maintain your certification. And of course the best way to do that is to get trained. Well, I don't know. So what I did is I got in contact with the people who should know, I wrote to the PMI and they're working on it and they're going to let me know. So keep your ears open and I will be able to hopefully tell you in a few weeks, whether or not listening to this show here will be helping you with gaining your PDUs.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:43):
And while we are talking about the PMI here is announcement and announcement from them. And the announcement is the fact that the registration for the PMI global Congress, 2006 in Asia, Pacific is now open. And they write that the project management institutes global congresses are created with the goal of providing project managers and team members with the highest quality learning experience needed to stay ahead of the project management pro fashion. And this Congress, uh, the PMI global Congress, 2006 Asia Pacific will take place from the 27th of February to the first March, 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand. And of course, Bangkok, Thailand that brings back that good old song from Murray had Oriental sitting in the city. Now the city is the creme de LA creme of the chess world and a show with everything. All right? And before we move on to the news, here is a word from our sponsor. This episode of the project management podcast is sponsored by project load. Project load is a web based project management and time tracking tool, project load, lets teams maintain and forecast their own tasks helps project managers track their projects, gives PMOs one place to you, all projects and provides executives, valuable insight into exactly where their organization is spending their time. You can find project load at projectload.com.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:38):
I once again have several very interesting news items for you here this week. The first one is from November 8th. It comes to us from Sweden and it's titled the Swedish railway administration bank. Vericut selects ifs applications. They write bank Vericut industrial division, which supplies, railway systems and related services in Sweden and other parts of Europe we'll implement the ifs applications. The business software will enable bank of America, industrial division to streamline management of a range of internal and external processes. I am now not mentioning this because I like this ifs application. I don't even know it, but I'm mainly mentioning this because of what they say, why they are implementing this particular application or a particular application. They say since 2001, the market we operate in has been fully open to competition. So efficiency is crucial to the development and survival of our operations. And that's a Ingamar fried shallots who set that he is a project management manager at the bank.
Cornelius Fichtner (06:59):
Vericut industrial division. He says the implementation of ifs applications is part of a major change program. The solution will give us the tools we need to streamline our processes. For example, it will be easier to plan and control our complex entrepreneurial projects. And he continues our core business consists of complex entrepreneurial projects, but we also weld rails and manufacturer signaling equipment and technical cabin in a traditional industrial environment. To me, this means that the Swedish railway administration realizes the important part that project management plays in an ever changing and extremely competitive marketplace. They are embracing project management and pardon the pun are moving full steam ahead with it.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:00):
Our next news item is along the same lines as the one that you have just heard. It is from Thursday, November the 10th. And it comes to us from multi-car, which is an Island just South of Sicily in the Mediterranean. It is titled time and project management course for multiple hosts staff. And you can read that the human resources department of the multiple most recently organized a short training course in time and project manager, project management for its senior staff and the project management module provided the participants with the awareness of appropriate tools and techniques for planning, organizing, scheduling, and controlling of projects. And of course also the critical people management skills for achieving a project result. And they write here that a total of 32 line middle and senior management staff attended to this training course, which was held at the multiple post training center.
Cornelius Fichtner (09:07):
Okay. Big deal. You might say. So 32 people from multi-hour went to a project management seminar. Well think again, these were not 32 project managers. These were 32 line, middle and senior managers. And if you go back in a about two weeks ago in my show, then I had an announcement or a news item from Russ Archibald. He was at the seminar that they had in Moscow, and he had predictions for the year 2010. And what he said then is that project management will merge into the general management practice. And project management will become a required competency for executives. And this is exactly what's happening, or what's starting to show here in this news item, executives, managers taking project management seriously and actually getting trained on it.
Cornelius Fichtner (10:13):
Our next item is a survey that has just recently been released. This is from the November 9th, 2005, and it's titled NASCIO releases findings from state it project management survey. And NASCIO is the national association of state chief information officers, I assume by national, they mean U S a national of course. And this survey is the result of 34 state project management offices that had participated in this self-assessment, which happened between August and September of 2005. And throughout the report, as you can read, you will find that there are several core themes, which emerge as recommendations for success in initiatives, in it initiatives on a state level. And they are a, that there is a value in adopting an enterprise approach towards it investment. So take a look at your whole enterprise when you do 80 investments. They also say that given the complexity of implementing it projects both within and across state agencies clarifying the governance structure during the initiation phase of the project is, is essential.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
In today's show you will get to hear: Listener Feedback. Apple podcast tip. Project Management News. An interview with Diane Altwies from Outercore Inc. on project management training. And finally my cookbook on how to deliver advanced training to PMP® credential holders in your area.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:10): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com. All send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Cornelius Fichtner (00:30):
Hello, and welcome to show number 10. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the Project Management Podcast for the 5th of November, 2005. And today you are going to get some training, but before we move on to the main section of the show as usual few announcements and things that I want to get off my chest, and we start out with a word from our sponsor. This episode of the project management podcast is sponsored by project load. Project load is a web based project management and time tracking tool, project load lets teams maintain and forecast their own tasks helps project managers track their projects, gives PMOs one place to view all projects and provides executives, valuable insight into exactly where their organization is spending their time. You can find project This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now the announcements that I have today are first about the sound quality. Those of you who have listened to show number nine and show number nine and a half in particular, you may have noticed that the sound quality wasn't really up to what it was or what it used to be.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:42):
Well, I tried a new microphone and I wasn't really all too happy with it. So I went back to my old microphone here and I hope to upgrade to a better microphone sometime down the road. Then I'll also notice that because I put out two shows so quickly after each other, that some of you may have missed show nine. So here's a little trick. I know that most of you are using iTunes to download the show. So go to iTunes, open up iTunes and select edit preferences. And then a dialogue window will open. And there you click on the podcast tab. And in the podcast tab, you have various selections that you can do. And there is one selection that says when new episodes are available and there you select download all in that way. When you set it that way, it will automatically download all the latest episodes of every show that you subscribe to.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:40):
It's quite handy. If you are like me, I subscribed to various science shows and they sometimes put out two, three, four on the same day and it'll download all four or five of them fully, automatically. Don't have to do anything on to your feedback. And man, there was a lot of feedback that I got from you this week. And let me start out with an it trainer. Well, this is a training show today. So this is from Christian J Mark Lee. He's an it trainer and he writes, hello, Cornelius. I have just begun project management practices at my company about three to four months ago. My plan is to create a PMO in the next two years. I've enjoyed your podcast as it helps me better understand the PM field. I would like to know if you might want, if you might have plans to discuss how a PM can balance several large scale projects going on simultaneously.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:38):
Good idea. Good idea. I will definitely go into that topic sometime down the road. I've been a implementation project manager and I've had to do exactly that. And I'll give you a few best practices on how I did that. It's difficult, but it's doable. The next one I got is from Harry Fisher. And this is an interesting one. Harry writes, I really enjoy your podcast. Thanks for contributing to the PM community. Here it comes last week, the ASQ quality progress magazine accepted an article, which he attached as well. And I was wondering if you might like me to record a short summary of this article. I read through the article I find, well, this is a good one. And I wrote back to Harry telling him, yep. Why don't you send over a sound file and we'll put it up right here on the show. Absolutely no problem right there.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:35):
Then when you go to my blog, that's pmpodcast.blogspot.com. You will be able to read the comment which Anne Babiak left and you left that in response to the PMO show. And it's a very long one, but, uh, the essence of this all is that the number one takeaway that they have had in terms of templates, they used was the, uh, meeting notes to document the meeting notes of the project management meetings. Because when there were problems, the committee that was mitigating these problems, they could go back and they could review these meeting notes. And thus the project managers were usually vindicated. And because these meeting notes help them to well cover their asses more or less, we put it, bluntly people in the future then began to actually use more and more of the templates that they provided for their PMO. So thank you N Babiak for this comment.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:45):
Very nice. I appreciate that. And folks, you can read the whole thing up on the website. Another one I got is from, uh, [inaudible] actually [inaudible] last name and he writes, I like your informal way of communicating about the PM topics. Sometimes this is taken way too seriously. I agree. I'd like to, I try to put a little bit of humor into what I do and, and I enjoy this one very much. I communicated the project management part cost to the Latin America project managers in HP, Hewlett Packard. Well, perfect. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Your helping me to get the word out here. I got, uh, I got one more here. This one is from Jeff Schmidt and he tells me that he's been listening to the project management podcast while he works out in the morning. So he works out both his body and his mind.
Cornelius Fichtner (06:45):
Your shows are a good way to get up to speed on the news in the world of project management and here, pardon me. And here are some real world application of the skills needed to be a good project manager and he wrote to us from Austin, Texas. Well, thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it very much as feedback from you here. Very nice. All right. Those of you who don't use a podcatcher software like iTunes or Doppler or one of the automatic downloaders, I'd just like to remind you that there is a new show notification that you can subscribe to just go to my blog and you will see on the left hand side, the little announcement that says never miss a show, just click on that subscribe. And I will send you a quick email. Once a new show is up and you will not miss a show, you will however, miss a show on Saturday, the November 26.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:45):
Actually everybody will miss that particular show because this is the Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States. For those of you outside of the U S this is the number one holiday here, and me and my wife, we will be traveling to Arizona, to our family and friends, actually friends in Phoenix, family in Tucson. And I will not be producing a show that week. So no show on Saturday, November 26th. All right. And, uh, there was a lot that was happening this week in the news. And here we go with our next segment, I got five items for you. Five, six, five, or six. Here we go with the news.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:36):
The first news item is called a view into Google's inner workings. And this comes to us from the October 25th vortex, 2005, where Douglas Merrill, who is the senior director of information technology at spoke and a quick overview of this one here. He told them that for Google information is enlightenment and not power. And the entire corporation is compelled to give information freely and learn from each other. That's a different approach. In most companies, information is kept tightly and close to your chest. I want to give it away. Um, also they talk about the innovative innovation strategy that they have at Google and the way they do that is they keep their employees challenged and they move them around from project to project. As an employee at Google, you only spend about 12 to 18 months in one area, and then you get moved around. Of course, that causes a lot of well movement and a lot of loss of information, but they do have a, what they call a Google project database at the center of the soul and note that they call it a reporting system and not a project tracking tool. That's also interesting and very, very different thing here is that everybody from engineering to sales, to sales, to folks who sweep the floors can read this Google project database and create commentary on anything within the database. So if you work at Google, you have access to their information database and you can input your ideas. Very interesting concept right here at Google.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
The international project management day on November 3, 2005, is intended to encourage project based organizations worldwide or organizations who utilize project management methodologies to schedule some type of recognition event within their organizations or coordinated locally with others to truly demonstrate appreciation for the achievements of project managers and their teams.
Here is what you can do to support the day... Individually: Thank your project manager or teams by phone, email, card, or in person Take a project manager to lunch Ask how a project is going and show interest in results Wear a t-shirt that reads "Kiss Me - I'm a Project Manager"
Organizationally: Recognize the PMO for their contributions to the organization Set up a scheme for project manager coaching and mentoring Communicate and celebrate project successes Sponsor a project management “coffee break” Reach out to project managers in emerging positions such as those in the role of project manager in SAFe agile and bring them together into a community of practice Share some news from social media for project managers that they would find relevant (what about something from our social media channels?)
Locally: Attend a project management association meeting Schedule a recognition event for project managers Publish an article in a local newspaper or newsletter
Internationally: Attend a special webinar hosted by The International Institute for Learning Join a project management association Observe and learn about international projects that impact your community or quality of life
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:10): [inaudible] you are listening to the project management podcast.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:14):
We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to pmpodcast@gmailcom.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:28):
Hello, and welcome to the nine and a half show. I am Cornelius Fichtner. This is the project management podcast for the 1st of November, 2005. And all I want to do today is talk about the international project management day. Now you may say why an international project management day. No, let's change the question around. Let's ask why project management to start with what good does project management really do in companies? Most of my listeners here are going to be project managers. So I probably am not going to have to tell you what good project management does for your companies. You are aware of it. I mean, you know, that project management gives you repeatable processes, that it makes it measurable, that you will be able to learn. You will be come as a company, more mature as you move along the line because of project management. But what about management?
Cornelius Fichtner (01:37):
What about other people out there? Well, there are in fact studies out there that indicate that project management does in fact add significant value. An example for this is the study, which was conducted by the center for business practices, which is the, the research branch for PM Solutions incorporated. And this particular study States that out of more than a hundred senior level project management practitioners, which they asked 94 of the respondents indicated that project management did in fact add value to their organization in areas such as financial measures, customer measure, and process measures. So people at the senior level up there realize or begin to realize at least that project management has value, but there are also still many skeptics out there who think that project management is just something anyone can do. It's plain luck, it's smoke mirrors, fancy charts, Gantt charts, and everything that we project managers do.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:56):
And it's not really anything that lends value to the business. Well, we know that's not true, but many people out there still believe it. So therefore the dream from Frank P Solartis grew, Frank is the president of the PMI New York chapter. And here's what he says. The dream as conceived by the PMI 35 years ago has not yet been achieved until project management becomes accepted as a strategic necessity and perceived, and is perceived as the ultimate method to promote collaboration, improve productivity and increase efficiency. The work is not done and there is nothing more fun than doing that work. So that's what Frank said. It's actually a quote made by bill Gates, which he modified for project management. That's what he said. And based on that, he created the international project management day. He dreamed that up. Now the goal of the international project management day.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:10):
And of course there is a website it's called international PM day.org. It's one word international PM, day.org. And the goal behind it is the worldwide recognition of the many project managers and project teams in every industry, including nonprofit organizations and healthcare who contributes their time, energy, creativity, innovation, and plus hours to deliver products, services, facility, and provide emergency and disaster recovery services in every city and community around the world. The international project management day is intended to encourage project based organizations, worldwide or organization. We'll utilize project management methodologies to schedule some type of recognition event within their organizations to, or coordinate locally with others to truly demonstrate appreciation for the achievements of project managers and their teams. So there you go. That's the goal of it all. So in other words, do something, give some visibility to project management in your company, in your team, in your PMO yeah.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:29):
In your local practice national organization, but there is more of that they, right, because there is also a purpose. What they want to do is also to integrate crease the awareness of the value of project management within the large businesses, government, small business and social communities, and promote project management as a true profession and key business strategy. And to me, those two lost are really well key, promote them as a true profession. And as a key business strategy, project management today is not really recognized as a true profession. And it needs to be project management in some businesses is recognized as a key business strategy in some it isn't. And it really should because if you have a dream as a CEO of a company, how do you turn that dream into reality? Well, you call over a project manager and you say, here, this is my dream. Do this, implement the following. And the project management will go off and do it. So a highly important well profession that is needed. And of course this includes,
Cornelius Fichtner (06:52):
But the whole purpose includes all the industries out there. Construction information, technology, entertainment, government, aeronautics, healthcare, ecology, you name it, social disaster, recovery, community improvement, quality of life projects, you name it. Now what they did This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is they organized various worldwide events. And one big thing is a webinar that they're going to have hold three times on the 3rd of November. Oh, by the way, did I mention
Cornelius Fichtner (07:36):
Until now? I don't think so. So
Cornelius Fichtner (07:39):
Let me state this, the international project management day is on the 3rd of November. Okay.
Cornelius Fichtner (07:47):
So
Cornelius Fichtner (07:50):
Should've probably mentioned that at the very opening when it is so 3rd of November, and that's when the international project management days happening. And that is also the day when they're going to have these various events around the world, we're going to get to that. And they're also having a, a webinar, which they're going to have three times during that day to accommodate all of us around the globe. So we can visit this webinar. It's going to be opened by a keynote speaker, and then there are going to be various presentations. And the whole thing is approximately 90 minutes in duration. And believe it or not, you're even going to get PDU for watching that. I will be putting a link up on my blog. And by the time you hear this, it's already up there. So go to my blog PM, podcast.blogspot.com, and you'll be able to just simply click and it'll take you right to this free webinar that you can watch and gain a couple of people use.
Cornelius Fichtner (08:50):
I think it's about one and a half or two PDUs for attending this particular webinar online. Now the participants, there are quite a few big names here. Uh, all pm.com is sponsoring this. I L Institute for learning incorporated is the international. Pardon me Institute for learning incorporated is, uh, also by a participant it's a sponsoring organization and the IRL is actually hosting the webinar. Then there is the PM forum where you can get lots and lots of good news about project management. And then there are various chapters, PMI, mosques, golf course sued Yugoslavia, Delaware, New York city, the PMI itself, the IPMA the international project management association is also joining in and a company. I do not know MTC integration is also a participant in this all now, what do they do? Well, here we go. The PMI Delaware Valley chapter is presenting a project management tools conference. On that particular day. MTC integration corporation is going to be sponsoring a reception for local project managers who live and work in the Frederick Maryland area. So you may want to get in touch with them. If you want to get involved with that particular event, the PMI Moscow chapter, they will be doing the project management is jazz reception, and I bet you they're going to have a live jazz band right there. And the PMI false'hood is going to do the [inaudible].
Cornelius Fichtner (10:42):
And it's going to be on the Theme of Lazarus, young days, excisions, which is if my French 'suffit la gestion des exigences'. So if you're in France, if you are in France sued, um, you may want to be joining in on that particular event. All right, what can you do? Well, if this is something that interests you, if you want to help promote the importance of project management, well, it's probably a little bit late, but there is still something that you can do. Let's start on the big picture here. Let's start international internationally. You can attend that very particular webinar that I just mentioned, or you can personally join a project management organization, easy you can observe and learn about international projects that impact your community or quality of life. I mean, so far on the web, look what there is. What kind of project management events are available, what project kind of project management is happening in your neighborhood in internationally, locally?
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
As always, I get a few things off my chest before the main section of the show. Today, we continue my "Dear Diary" and you can hear what went wrong on my projects this week. That's followed by Chuck Tomasi, who gives us more insights of a junior project manager. Then we discuss several useful and not so useful project management techniques. Furthermore, I humbly apologize to the PMO SIG, the Project Management Office Specific Interest Group, whom I completely forgot to mention during the last show before I finally review the Project Execution Cycle of Cygnet Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
Good: [Links have been removed per request of Cygnet Infotech Pvt. Ltd]
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Speaker 1 (00:00:10): [inaudible]
Cornelius Fichtner (00:00:10):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to the ninth show. I am Cornelius Fichtner. This is the project management podcast for the 29th of October, 2005. And today we have a nice mix of subjects for you at the center of today's show are a few project management techniques. Some are for you and some are for fun, and it's going to be your job figuring out which ones are for real, but we feel we do that. Uh, here are a few items that I'd like to get off my chest. First of all, a quick Gmail reminder, and the last show I offered to you that if you want a Gmail account, just drop me a mail and I will be more than happy to send you an invitation and I'm extending this.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:01:14):
So if you want an email, let me know, and I will invite you to email, uh, as long as my supplies last with these invitations that I have from Gmail themselves, then a quick followup on the very last thing that I said in the show. Number eight last week, if you listen to the show to the very end, you will notice that at the end, I put in a little bit of wisdom, the last golden nugget of the show, so to speak. And last week I said that you should never forget to communicate with your stakeholders. Well, as so happens this week, I have found that this is very true on another project. In my company, the project manager there let communication with the stakeholders, slide on his project, and then he sent out an email to them and, uh, you have to do communication, right?
Cornelius Fichtner (00:02:16):
He sent out this email with the subject line in all upper capitals. So big, big letters, and it read immediate response required. Well, that was not the right thing to do. The customer was very unhappy about that, especially because this email was sent to senior vice presidents. So, um, I have to amend my golden nugget there and it should now say something along the lines of, and don't forget to not stop communicating with your stakeholders. And when you communicate with your stakeholders, do it right. Then I also want know a little bit more about you. I am planning to put up a little survey within the next two to three weeks, and I would be delighted if you would take that survey, it's going to be a really short one maximum of 10 questions, a point and click so that I know who you are, where you live, and you will also have an opportunity there to tell me what you're interested in and what kind of subjects you would like to see on my show.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:03:32):
So look out for that. That's coming. And if you've been to my website lately, you will have noticed that there are Google ads on the left hand side of the website. And then occasionally I click on them just to see what kind of companies actually advertise on my site, so to speak. And I came across the website of expert rating, project management certification, actually the company's called expert writing, and they were pointing towards their project management certification page. Here's what they say because a certified project manager give you a career and job prospects. It's a boost, the expert, the project, no, the expert rating project management courses are well-researched 250 page online course that has been developed for people who would like to boss the science of project management. And they also say that it has been designed so that it's easily on the stood both by beginners, uh, by beginners and people new to projects.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:04:36):
So I looked at this for a little while thinking, Oh, this looks nice. And, um, as I moved on, I realized, okay, you know, this certification costs $99 and 99 cents. And it's an online certification. It's an online course. And frankly, I don't think that's a good deal because if you are new to project management, if you are a beginner, you don't want to sit at home at your computer and just read a few words on pages on a website. If you are new, you want to be able to ask questions. You need to be able to sit in a classroom with a teacher who goes through the basics of project management. So here's my a suggestion to you. If you are new to project management, if you're a beginner and you have $99 and 99 cents that you want to spend, I would spend it on an, on, not on online training, but on an in class project management, maybe try to find a community college in your area, but don't do something like this online certificate.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:05:46):
And just to make it clear, I'm not putting down the folks here at expert rating. I'm just saying that if you're new to project management, if you're a beginner, you don't want to do this online. You definitely want to do this in a classroom. That's my opinion here. All right, then I have a three quick project management Institute, PMI related items. If you are a PMP and your certification cycle ends this year on the 31st of December, then you have to make sure that you report your PDU by year end. So go online and report European news. Make sure that you don't let your certification lapse here. The PMI also announced that it is racing towards its 250,000 member. Wow, early this year, we didn't even have 200,000 member. And now we're already heading towards 250,000. That's just great. The PMI is also making the following announcement, the PMI educational foundation, 2006 student paper of the year award call for entries. And this is for graduate or undergraduate students who are also project managers. And the call is for them to hand in their papers for the 2006 student paper of the year award. And this one recognizes research and creative efforts directed to advance the concepts, tools, and techniques of managing project oriented tasks. All right, these were the items that I wanted to get off my chest this week. And now let's move forward with the news.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:07:52):
We'll continue with the PMI here with the first news item, just a quick one. It's from Thursday, October 27th, and it's titled Lynn Wheeling, departs PMI for applied systems, client network, Lynn wheeling. She's the a component and community relations department manager of the PMI. Uh, she joined the PMI in 2000 and has left them to become the executive director of applied systems, client network, A S C net, which is the user group for applied systems, agency management technology. I met Lynn for the first time at the 2005 leadership seminar until mom Toronto a month ago or so, uh, really liked her and absolutely sorry to see her go.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:08:45):
Second news item is from October 19th, 2005, and it's titled making it development visible to hire a business. Management is another benefit of new generation application life cycle management. That's a long one. This is all about a report that has come out and that's from research and markets research and marcus.com. And they have announced the addition of application lifecycle management, a report to their offerings. And this is a technology evaluation and comparison report. Let's see what they say. This report looks at the reasons why application development projects often go so badly wrong. That's a good thing. And why so many efforts to correct predictable problems also fail. One of the most important reasons is that there is an enormous gap between the developers who work on application projects and the managers who set the goals of the projects, regardless of how good the technology may be. That is being used.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:09:56):
If these two groups doing all talk to each other, Oh, wait, that's supposed to be the job with the project manager. Isn't it? Hmm. Okay. So if these groups do not talk to each other, the project is at risk of failure and most project managers. Oh, here we go. Most project managers seem to be at a loss, how to deal with this problem. Oh, okay. Best practices designed to manage the above issue along with other related problems along the whole application development life cycle are provided throughout this report. Well, sounds like an interesting report, right? Yup. Probably is. However, you're going to have to be willing to pay 1,495 euros for this one.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
I start the show by giving away some free stuff and talk about a few items on my chest. I introduce a new show segment "Project Management in the News" (links below) and then move on to the main topic: My experience with PMOs. You'll hear what I learned during setting up three PMOs and I call for you to write in and give me your definition of what P?M?O? actually stands for. Send me an email with your most outlandish, funny or real definitions of the acronym PMO.
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number eight. I am Cornelius fish. Now this is the project management podcast for the 22nd of October, 2005. And today we are going to test your creativity. Tell me what the letters P M O stand for. But before we do that, there are a few things I want to talk about. Let me start out the show today by giving away some free stuff, but don't get too excited because it's nothing project management related a little while ago, travel indoors. A listener from Australia asked me if I could invite him to a gmail account, because obviously he can't just sign up to a gmail account. Didn't know that, but g-mail seems to be by invitation only if you do not have a gmail account.
Cornelius Fichtner (01:23):
And if you would like to have a Gmail account, drop me a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. And I shall send you an invitation. This offer is of course good, as long as supplies last, but as far as I understand, Gmail is rather good. Once you're using up a few, they fill up the bucket quite quickly for you. Again, next, if you are listening to my show via a subscription, you don't have a problem. You won't miss a show like you're using iTunes or iPod or, and you subscribe to it. And as soon as I update my RSS file, the show gets downloaded automatically to your iPod or MP3 player. No problem there, but for those of you out there who are listening to the show, shall we say manually, you go to the blog every week and you click on the sh on the link that says, click here to listen to the show.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:19):
You may miss a show. So I put up a sign up for a new show notification. And when you go to my blog, you will see on the left hand side, it reads, don't miss a show, sign up to receive a new show notification. And when you sign up through there, you can sign up for other things too, like for the newsletter or when I have free stuff to give away. At some point I will send notifications out so that you won't miss any of that. Next. I have some reader feedback. Let me see, where is it up here? It is. It is from Christian, from Bucharest in Romania. And he writes Cornelius. I have been listening since the beginning, and I am glad to say that your podcast is getting better each episode, both in content and in audio quality. Thank you very much, Christian.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:16):
Really appreciate this feedback right here. And another thing I want to talk about is the value of the PMP certificate. I spoke to a colleague of mine here in California. Her name is Cindy Ferguson, and she recently got her PMP certificate and we were talking on the phone and she told me that people have at work. We're kind of looking down at all, three of them who got the PMP certificate at the same time. Yeah, people were saying some things along the line, Oh, look, you got a little Mickey mouse certification there. In the meantime, her company has gone through a reorganization and people are suddenly realizing the value of the PMP certificate, where Cindy is working Cindy and her colleagues have now been asked to work on PM policies and procedures, as well as taking the PMBOK guide and modifying it so that it can be used as the internal, the internal operating guide for their project.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:29):
That's additionally, there will, it'll be an internal requirement for all project managers, right. To take the certification. Okay. It's wonderful for me to see that companies like Cindy's see the value of the certification and use the PM piece to their extent. Yeah. And while we're at it, here is some information about project management [inaudible] and this is from the PMI and they are offering an intensive course in project management fundamentals. Let me quote from this one here, Thursday, October 27th begins the final 2005 term of the PMI E seminars, world course, project management fundamentals and intensive program component members who are new to project management or who seek a more formal approach to project management would benefit from the program as would functional managers and staff in technical leadership roles. The program runs through the 2nd of December, 2005 and consists of five courses, introduction to project management, defining the project schedules and budgets, estimating, and risk and team dynamics. So you or
Cornelius Fichtner (05:58):
Anyone in your company or anyone that you know is looking for some P M fundamentals that this here might be a good place to start, go to my blog. I'll put up the link to this one, and now let's get the show rolling. There was so much in the news this week about project management that I decided, you know what, this calls for a new segment right here on the project management podcast. So here we go with the news of the last two weeks, and it's a bit longer than you can expect in the future, but there were so many good news stories that I just wanted to get them your way. So here's what the new set
Cornelius Fichtner (06:40):
First news item I have is IBM donates project management code to open source community. This is from the 12th of October, 2005. I quote IBM is donating some of its rational project development technology to the open source eclipse foundation to help improve software development. IBM says it's donating 3000 lines of code. Well, as I'll throw mystic as this may sound from my point of view, IBM is in a market to make money. And the only reason I can see for IBM to make this donation is if it actually benefits IBM. And I bet that IBM is banking on the eclipses foundation to include a very strong re-upped support, enter their software. Well, we'll see where this one goes.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Tons of "Golden Nuggets of Wisdom" in today's show! Following some listener feedback at the start of the show, I am introducing three new show segments:
Simon Says: Chuck Tomasi from www.chuckchat.com has recently moved into a junior project manager position. Whenever Chuck shares his experiences on his own show, I will cut & paste that segment into The Project Management Podcast, so that you are able to hear his insights right here. Today, Chuck learns about letting the experts talk for themselves.
Dear Diary: I got a new project this week and this is my audio diary. I will talk about my approach, my successes, my failures and about all the crazy stuff that happens on a small IT project. Today, things go wrong even before we get to the kick-off meeting.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: This is my review segment in which I will review PM related website, podcasts, books, newsletters or anything else that is reviewable and comes across my desk. If you have a suggestion, drop me a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Today, I am reviewing the excellent website of Max Wideman at www.maxwideman.com.
And I also mention that the cost-saving early registration of the PMI Global Congress 2005 - Latin America has been extended until October 21, 2005.
Tons of "Golden Nuggets of Wisdom" in today's show! Following some listener feedback at the start of the show, I am introducing three new show segments:
Kristine Hayes Munson is the Chair of the Project Management Institute, Orange County Chapter. Amongst other topics, we talk about her career as a project manager, what the benefits of being a PMI member are, how she became chair of the chapter, her involvement in the PMI Leadership Institute and about why you should become a PMP. And you definitely don't want to miss The Final 10, the ten questions I ask at the end of each interview.
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.
Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):
You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to PM This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number six. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now the show is recorded on the 8th of October, 2005. And today I have my first guest on the show. This guest is Kristine Hayes Munson, who is the president of the project management Institute, orange County chapter, the PMI-OC, I asked Christine to be on the show today because I have had several email conversations with listeners regarding the PMI. They ask questions, like, why should I join the PMI? What skills can I learn as a PMI volunteer? Or what will the PMP certification do for me? And I figured rather than me pontificating about this subject, I want to bring someone on the show who knows the PMI inside out and who can back up her views on the PMI with personal experience. It did not take me long to decide who I wanted to talk to because whenever I have a PMI related question, Christine is usually my one stop shop. She knows the PMI inside out. So one day at the office, I got up, I walked over to my boss and I said, Hey, Christine, how would you feel about doing an interview on my podcast? She said, yes. And here it is
Announcer (01:47):
The project management podcast feature interview today with Kristine Hayes-Munson chair of the project management Institute, orange County chapter in California.
Cornelius Fichtner (02:09):
Kristine Hayes Munson joined the PMI in 1999, but wasn't very active until she found the PMI-OC in 2001, Christine says choosing to become a PMI-OC volunteer was one of my best personal and professional decisions as a volunteer. She is privileged to work with and learn from countless other PMI-OC members. Christine has served as vice president of communications, vice president of professional development, and is the current chair slash president on the board of the PMI-OC. Professionally, Her project management experience includes a wide range of business process improvement and information technology projects in the finance printing and construction industries.
Cornelius Fichtner (03:04):
Currently, Christine oversees a team responsible for project portfolio tracking, project management, methodology development, standard operating procedure, documentation, audit, compliance, oversight, resource utilization, division intranet development, and senior management reporting for 145 member financial services technology department, Christine lives in Vista, California with her husband and their three children. Okay. Christine, even though we've been working together for a long time, we've known each other for about what two and a half years now, something like that. The one thing I never ever asked you is you've grown up in Idaho on the farm. How on earth did you ever end up in one of the oldest financial institutions of the United States as a project manager?
Kristine Hayes-Munson (04:02):
Well, first off, I didn't really grow up on a farm. My father taught school until I was 14 and my mother, um, chose not to relocate to live on the farm. So we stayed in the big city of American falls, which had 3,600 people. Huge, huge, huge city. There's actually stoplights there. Acacia curious. Um, I went to college and was an English major, gotta be any English and found that it was a very marketable skill I could work at McDonald's. I go work at burger King. I chose Kinko's because I would not smell like food after I was through actually I had gone to Kinko's to copy my resume and they had the big help wanted sign. And I'm like, well, you just cough you know.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:47):
So what kind of job did you take at Kinko?. Probably not as project manager to start you off.
Kristine Hayes-Munson (04:51):
No, I worked at the front counter at, Kinko's making $5 an hour
Cornelius Fichtner (04:56):
Here. I need 20 copies of that.
Kristine Hayes-Munson (04:58):
Absolutely.
Cornelius Fichtner (04:59):
Okay.
Kristine Hayes-Munson (05:00):
And then from there, I just kind of accidentally fell into working in the desktop publishing area, which is my first introduction to technology beyond just using my PC at home. And so I did desktop publishing for three or four years using a Macintosh. So I'm a huge Mac fan. I have two of those at home. And from there I just kept climbing the Kinko's corporate ladder and looking for new opportunities to improve what I was doing and to challenge myself and to explore new options. And one of the options that I was able to uncover was the opportunity to go work at Kinko's corporate office and manage the program around the operations manual. And I probably I'd always had always been using project management skills, but I didn't really know what I was doing as a project managers till I went to work at Kinko's corporate office, and I had.
Cornelius Fichtner (05:58):
Using project management skills. I didn't know what it was until I started getting into the profession and getting training. Yeah.
Kristine Hayes-Munson (06:04):
Yeah. I had a title. I didn't know what it meant basically. So big, this thing happened, I understood that part, but I didn't know what, what a program project manager was. And I was working for a woman who understood that and pointed me to UCSPB university of California at Santa Barbara. They had an extension program where they were teaching project management. So I basically took, there were a bunch of us who took it together and a night class on project management. One-on-one from everything on how to write a schedule and use Microsoft project to more in depth project management topics. And that lasted about 18 months. And that was the first time I really understood what a project manager was. And through that involvement, I ran into some people who were active in the PMI LA chapter, and they started talking very highly of the project management Institute and what it had done for them and were trying to get me involved in that chapter.
Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.
Cornelius Fichtner
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, CSM, is the host and the author at The Project Management Podcast. He has welcomed hundreds of guests and project management experts to the podcast and has helped over 60,0000 students prepare for their PMP® Exam. He has authored dozens of articles on projectmanagement.com and PM World 360. He speaks at conferences around the world about project management, agile methodology, PMOs, and Project Business. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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