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My guest today is none other than Dr David Hillson (http://www.risk-doctor.com). You may have heard of him as the Risk Doctor and having him on the program is a great opportunity for us. In fact… project opportunity management is actually at the center of todays discussion!

Here is what David says about opportunities: "Most PMs still don’t get is the idea of upside risk or opportunity - or more accurately, they understand the theory but they don’t put it into practice." So in a moment we will not only learn what opportunities are, but more importantly we’ll hear David discuss several ways of identifying as well a properly managing them on your project.

Risk management strategies for agile projects use the same techniques so this episode is relevant to listeners working with agile techniques as well.

Since this is the first (and long overdue) appearance of David on The PM Podcast, here is a little bit about him first:

Known globally as The Risk Doctor, Dr David Hillson is an award-winning thought-leader and expert practitioner who consults and writes widely on risk management. His ground-breaking work in project risk management was recognised by honorary fellowships from both the Association for Project Management (APM) and the Project Management Institute (PMI®). He was also named “Risk Personality of the Year” in 2010-11. David is an active Fellow of the Institute of Risk Management (IRM), and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) to contribute to its Risk Commission. He is also a Chartered Fellow with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

I also recommend that you read the following Risk Doctor Briefings:

• How Do I Find Opportunities (PDF)
• Working Backwards to Opportunities (PDF)
• Opportunity Management Means Scope Creep? (PDF)

Each of these briefings is related to the topic of our discussion.

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In this video we answer the following questions about Agile Project Management from Alicia Aurichio, PMP:

• What is the most common or widely-used form of Agile?
• What types of industries are using Agile?
• What are the success metrics of adopting Agile in the organization?
• Some business groups are adopting "Agile" for business processes, as well. Is there an Agile business method that is different from the traditional Agile Software Development methodologies?
• How do you obtain hands-on experience in Agile PM, if you are not currently working for an organization that uses agile?

Agile is growing in popularity, and has been for some time. Whether you want to take some scrum agile project management training, move into the role of project manager in SAFe agile, or any of the other methods, approaches and frameworks in use, adding Agile to your skillset is sure to enhance your career.

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

How do you know whether or not someone is actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing on your project? Well.. we could assume that if they are assigned to your project then they must be working on the project, right? Well… maybe. But sometimes it is not so clear. Sometimes you just don’t have that “warm fuzzy feeling”.

And that pretty much is the point where today’s interview with Margaret Meloni starts. From here we will explore how such situations can occur, how line managers could be responsible for causing this kind of feeling in us project managers and we’ll take a look at a few examples from Margaret’s professional life.

But most importantly  of course, we will look at what can be done to both avoid and deal with such situations.

This PM Podcast interview is based on Margaret Meloni's coachinar titled 3 Reasons People Do Not Do Their Jobs (And What to Do About It)...

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

John Donohoe (http://de.linkedin.com/pub/john-donohoe/3/545/24b) is the Director of Project Management at Star Alliance, and portfolio management is his passion.

He says that many corporations don’t fail when they are developing a strategic plan but instead, they fail in the execution of that plan. This is basically because executing strategy consists of two main components, which are doing the right projects and doing projects right. Once you have this down, then effective portfolio management enables companies to do the right projects by ensuring that all projects are aligned to the overall strategy.

And this again means that Strategic PMOs (SPMOs) are quite well  positioned to do more than just ensuring that projects are done right. Instead they will also be able to maximize your corporate portfolio as well as provide the bridge between project demand and resource supply.

This interview with John not only discusses this in detail, but we’ll also look at some best practices in regards to managing your project portfolio and we’ll talk about what we all can do to ensure strategic alignment of our projects in an organization where there are no PMOs that support us.

John Donohoe has 30-plus years of experience developing IT systems in various roles.  He has lived in the US, Canada, Belgium, Tokyo and for more than 20 years has called Frankfurt, Germany home. As the Director of the Star Alliance PMO, he successfully implemented an Agile approach to complement the waterfall project management methodology.  Additionally he refreshed Star Alliance’s stage-gate and project governance processes. For the past two years his focus and passion has been helping Star Alliance better execute its strategy via portfolio management.  John takes a holistic view of executing strategy with the PMO as a key partner in the overall process.

John Donohoe will be speaking on the topic of the SPMO and on April 28th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. So if you are listening to this interview before then, you can find out more at http://projectzonecongress.com/ [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]