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Niraj Kumar, PMP

Leadership in project management is an important topic these days. And if you are like most project managers then you may have fallen into project management a bit by accident. And then, after you have successfully delivered a few projects, suddenly everyone tells you that you must improve your project management leadership skills.

Effective project management, they say, depends a lot on your project leadership, and we have many leadership podcasts in the archives to help you do that.

But today we are tuning in to another expert in the field. Once you realise that you have to transform into a project leader then leadership training will be part of your ongoing professional development, and that is where our guest can help.

Niraj Kumar (www.leadproje.com -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thenirajkumar) is a leadership expert and proponent of self-growth through continuous learning. Together we explore his view on leadership, how these skills help you as a project manager, how they help you when dealing with senior executives. We talk about the power of project leadership and as always we include a lot of tips on how you yourself can improve how you approach project management and leadership starting today.

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This episode is sponsored by the PMP Exam Simulator:

Dr. Julie DeSot, PMP

If you are preparing for your PMP Exam then you know that one of the most important activities is to take many PMP sample exams and answer as many PMP sample questions as you can.

But as a general rule, it is not always easy to identify the correct PMP exam answers.

Those who pass the PMP exam often report back that PMP answers are ambiguous, sometimes more than one looks right and sometimes you may even have to choose the one that is least wrong. So what are you to do?

One solution is that you can work with a PMP Trainer who guides you and works with you on those pesky questions. And this is of course exactly why I have invited Dr. Julie DeSot (https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliedesot) for an interview. As a PMP coach she has helped many people successfully prepare for their PMP exam and get to the bottom of those questions.

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

Fernando Remolina, PMP

Shipyards and dockyards are the places where ships are repaired and built. Here we are talking about yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other types of cargo or passenger ships. And of course, in order to stay on time, on budget and on scope, a shipyard project manager oversees the project.

Fernando Remolina González (https://www.linkedin.com/in/remolinaf) has been working in ship repair and shipbuilding project management for about a decade. He is one of the few voices that write and speak about their experience in managing projects on ships.

It's a fascinating and centuries old industry that requires the project manager to have lots of technical experience. Beyond that shipyard project management follows a pretty standard approach. You initiate, plan, execute, monitor & control, and then you close the project. But as in any other industry, it’s what you do that makes all the difference.

This interview is based on Fernando's article titled "Shipyards: Fast and Complex Projects" [Update: the website is no longer available, so we removed the link].

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This episode is sponsored by the PMP Exam Simulator:

Fernando Remolina, PMP

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a powerful project management planning and controlling tool. It is the backbone to planning and managing scope on any project and - as you will hear in our interview - every ship repair project must have it.

Fernando Remolina González (https://www.linkedin.com/in/remolinaf) is a project management professional and works for the Curacao Drydock Company in ship repair, engineering and ship conversion. In his many years of working in shipyard project management he realized that managing the scope is both central and vital and that the WBS is the tool to use. And his successful projects are the proof.

So he set out to help others in his industry and wrote the article WBS for Ship Repair Projects. But here is the good news. First of all his article offers a fascinating look at shipbuilding project management and second, his review of how to apply and use a WBS can easily be applied to many other types of projects.