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Bruce Harpham, PMP

If you are a regular listener to The PM Podcast then you heard me say on many occasions that projects are the mechanism by which companies turn their vision and strategy into a reality. And it is us -- the project managers -- who are asked to bring these projects to a successful completion so that the business needs are met.

This means that we project managers need a great deal of business acumen and business awareness. But many of us are accidental project managers, who at some point in our career found ourselves to be quite shockingly thrust into the position of a project leader. We were taken by surprise back when that happened and now they suddenly tell us that we also need all this awareness?

Well, fear not because Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham and http://projectmanagementhacks.com) is here to tell you how to grow your business know-how as a project manager. In this interview we review what foundational skills you need, how to access internal business knowledge from your organization and how to look for information and trends in the broader environment outside the four walls of your company.

Our goal is to help you grow the situational awareness that you need day after day on your projects by adding business awareness.

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Bruce Harpham, PMP

Does your project rely on virtual teams? If yes, then it means that working remotely is the norm for your project team members.

Are they doing their work effectively and efficiently? And even if you answered yes, there is always room for improvement, right? Good, because how to make remote work productive is our topic today.

Our interview guest is Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham and http://projectmanagementhacks.com) who has written about remote workers and how to increase all our effectiveness. He argues that working virtually is simply the reality on many projects and project teams these days.

And so in order to help us improve remote work he recommends the following four steps:

• Evaluate your current tools
• Review communication preferences and strengths
• Analyze the project’s requirements
• Adjust your communication practices

We’ll go through each of these in detail with lots of examples from his own experience.

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. PDU for PMP::

Lindsay Scott

If you are working in a PMO then we have something good for you today.

Lindsay Scott (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/projectsmanagementrecruitment) from Arras People is back to talk us through the PMO Benchmark Report 2016. Yes... last week we looked at the overall PM Benchmark Report and right now it’s all about PMOs.

We are going to review who PMO practitioners are, who they work for, what their professional development looks like, how PMOs are set up, what functions they provide, where in the organization they are located from a reporting perspective, we’ll hear some PMO thoughts and challenges, and finally, we are going to be talking about www.pmoflashmob.org.

To download your PDF copy of this report, please visit the Arras People website and Request the PMO Benchmark Report 2016. You are also going to be invited to fill in the survey for the next report.

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Lindsay Scott

For over a decade now, Arras people has been publishing their yearly project management benchmark report and so I’ve invited Lindsay Scott (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/projectsmanagementrecruitment) to introduce it to us to this latest version.

Lindsay says about the report, that even after all this time of doing the research and seeing the changes over the years, it is hard not to be drawn to the fact that project management is still an exciting and growing field. The fact that projects are still failing suggests that even with all the effort and time expended we are still searching for that magic bullet which will ensure we deliver.

Of course, the report doesn’t give us this magic bullet, but it provides an interesting insight into what you and I are doing day after day.

There are two options for you to get a copy of this report:

• First, download your copy right here...
• But your second option, which is actually the better one, is to visit the Arras People website and Request the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016. Because in that way you are also going to be invited to fill in the survey for the next report.