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Jeff Furman, PMP - Project Management Coach

Have you ever considered being a project management mentor to another PM in your network? I can tell you from personal experience that while project management coaching sounds like a lot of work the return on investment that you personally get out of it is immense.

And so, when I received an email from Jeff Furman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefffurmanlinkedin) and he offered to discuss some of the mentoring approaches that he uses as a project management coach I was all for it.

In our discussion Jeff and I review:

• Staying in touch
• Answering questions
• Helping people connect
• Helping out on social media for project managers
• Writing recommendations
• Recommending resources
• Guiding your mentees to become mentors themselves
• And last but not least… Speed Mentoring

As you can probably already tell, none of these project management mentoring approaches are rocket science. But we still have some good best practices for you to follow.

Coaching and mentoring is useful for all project managers, but it's especially useful in emerging roles, or where you don't feel that your job description is particularly clear -- the role of project manager in SAFe agile springs to mind as an important position, but perhaps one that is less understood than 'traditional' approaches to being a project manager.

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This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP® Exam:

Bryan Bowers, MBA, PMP

This is another episode in which I am proudly introducing you to one of my successful students who was able to pass the PMP. His name is Bryan Bowers (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bowersbryan) and he is a student of the PMP PrepCast.

There are two reasons that make me especially proud of helping him pass. First of all, Bryan has taken over a dozen certification exams, and second he says that “this was by and far the most brutal exam I have ever taken”. And so I feel very satisfied that it was my exam preparation course that showed Bryan how to prepare for PMP.

In this PMP lessons learned interview you are going to hear him talk about his journey to becoming PMP certified from start to finish.

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Kim Wasson. Author, Speaker & PM Consultant.

Do you use an Agile project management approach? And have you maybe noticed a certain fatigue -- an Agile burnout, a Scrum burnout in your team?

Well, Agile is indeed an excellent methodology that is responsive to business changes with quick turnaround and highly visible results. But at the same time, the pace of a project using scrum project management -- or any Agile approch -- is relentless. It never seems to stop and this is potentially one of the biggest agile project management issues that the team may face. Unlike Waterfall there are very few built-in times for team members to catch their collective breath and celebrate milestones. Perhaps project managers in a Waterfall environment would disagree, but I think you can see what I mean.

This Scrum burnout was the basis of the article Agile Fatigue written by Kim Wasson https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimwasson. It’s a relatively short article that contains some good tips on how to combat this effect. So in our interview just now we are going to talk about the following symptoms:

• Burnout
• Meandering
• Stagnation
• The daily stand-up turns into a grind
• A secret move back to waterfall

But more importantly, we discuss what to do about them in order to battle the burnout, so agile project management with scrum doesn't mean risking your mental or physical wellbeing. Scrum agile project management training is one way of ensuring you are using good practices to manage the process, and in the interview Kim will share more ideas.

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Kim Wasson. Author, Speaker & PM Consultant.

When I was a junior project manager, I thought that managing my projects meant for me to focus primarily on the schedule. But as I grew from junior to senior I learned that in order to improve my project manager skills, I needed to learn how to manage project management relationships.

Every project is made up of people, and people are diverse and unpredictable beings. The fascinating study of people, how they interact, and what makes them tick is the heart of project management. It is also at the heart of "People-Centered Project Management", which is a free eBook by Kim Wasson https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimwasson.

The eBook is all about people project management and explores "The five elements that will make or break your project (unless you’re living in a cave)". The five elements are

• Building Relationships
• Common Goals
• Learning Style
• Motivation
• Skills Matching

These elements are not only at the core of project human resources management, they are also at the center of our discussion. We review each element and and give you lots of tips and tricks so that you can improve your project manager people skills.