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A couple of episodes ago we welcomed Todd C Williams and talked about rescuing the problem project. We continue this discussion today with Dr. Emad Rahim, DM, PMP (http://www.linkedin.com/in/erahim, @DrEmadRahim) by looking at how to avoid failure and achieve project success on information technology (IT) projects.

In particular, we discuss the findings on this topic that he and his co-author describe in a white paper, which begins as follows:

Communication and information technology has developed rapidly within the last decade.As a result, project managers must be prepared to manage the current and future challenges within the project management field, as well as within the IT industry. Rapid globalization of business means organizations must significantly increase its capacity to accurately manage information and data. In response to this growing capacity demand, more discussion is needed to develop effective IT project management processes and approaches

Listen to the interview to learn how it's done!

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Earn 37 Professional Development Units:

It’s imperative that you know your project’s stakeholders. After all, to satisfy a stakeholder need is usually the reason why we undertake projects. That’s why we define stakeholders as a person or organization with an interest in the project’s completion. Think of influential customers, sponsors, the public or your own company that are all involved in the project.

Our guest today is Dr. Emad Rahim, DM, PMP (http://www.linkedin.com/in/erahim, @DrEmadRahim) who says that because your stakeholders require you to understand the specifications of a project and to meet their expectations, performing an analysis of who they are is essential.

And so our interview focuses on a single activity: Identifying all the stakeholders we have on the project. This is a time-consuming process, and you want to ensure no important stakeholder is missed. And to help you with that, Emad and Cornelius review eight areas that require your attention.

You can find the blog post about stakeholder identification here: http://www.coloradotech.edu/resources/blogs/january-2013/stakeholders.

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:

It seemed that in the final weeks of 2013, project management was on everyone’s mind. And not in a good way. The roll-out of the affordable care act website really brought to light that substandard project performance can have a disastrous effect on public perception. While we often hear about failed government projects, failed private sector projects seem to fly under the radar.

In today’s interview we welcome Todd C. Williams (http://ecaminc.com/ - http://www.linkedin.com/in/backfromred) has spent the past 25 years advising Fortune 500 companies on what to do about projects that are either headed for a cliff or have already gone over.

We begin the interview by looking at what makes government projects uniquely susceptible to a higher failure rate than private sector projects and then move into seven steps that Todd recommends for recovering a troubled project.

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Happy New Year! This is a short notice to all listeners to let you know what's happening to The PM Podcast and our website: Over the coming 2-3 weeks we are going to be completely redeploying our website. After that Cornelius is heading out the door to Philadelphia, Sydney and Manila. We do have a few interviews recorded (they will be published as soon as the new website is up) and we have some interviews scheduled for recording after he returns from his trip. So we should be back to "normal programming" starting March.