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Recent research shows that project success often hinges on the ability of us project managers to meet and exceed stakeholder expectations. While this may not be a new revelation to seasoned project managers it still means that there is a new focus on stakeholder management in our profession. It's the topic of much project manager coaching and mentoring at the moment.

Mario Henrique Trentim (http://br.linkedin.com/in/trentim/) decided to put his experience and expertise on the subject in writing and wrote the book Managing Stakeholders as Clients. It is a practitioner’s guide that blends theory and practice for the rest of us. And by 'the rest of us' I mean project managers working in all kinds of environments. We need to take care of the needs of our stakeholders in predictive/Waterfall environments, agile teams (it's relevant to those in all agile roles including role of project manager in SAFe agile) and hybrid teams.

I’ve invited Mario to tell us why we should worry about the stakeholders on our project. As always when we have an author on the program we will talk less about the book itself, and focus more on his tips, tricks, best practices and Mario’s favorite tools to get the job done. Social media for project managers is one tool available to you for stakeholder communication, and Mario discusses other options as well.

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

This episode of The PM Podcast will be especially interesting for all those among you who want to become better project managers, for those who love to read, or for those who fall into both categories. That is because our guest Elizabeth Harrin will give us her review of 3 books that are related to project management with lots of great takeaways for everyone.

The books are

• Do Nothing by Keith Murnigan
• Real Influence by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen
• Strategies for Project Sponsorship by Vicky James, Ron Rosenhead and Peter Taylor

Elizabeth also wrote a review for each of these 3 books on her website and I encourage you to stop by at rebelsguidetopm.com because she does address a few angles on her blog that we did not discuss.

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

What would you say are the top 3 reasons why projects fail?

Of course there are many lists out there. Some give you the top 10 reasons, some the top 7 and they include things like lack of senior management involvement, unrealistic expectations, inexperienced project managers, improper delegation of task and responsibilities, failure to communicate and act as a team, or lack of resources.

But none of these made it to the list of the top 3 reasons why project fail from Yaron Sinai of Elementool (http://www.elementool.com). And just to give you a little preview here... “Poor requirements” is at the top of his list. And yes, while we review his top 3 reasons in detail, I think the much more interesting bit of the interview is the 2nd half, when we open Yaron’s book The Project Management Formula.

In this 120-page book Yaron mostly discusses many best practices and gives excellent advice on managing your projects. However, in our interview we focused on just the last 15 pages where he outlines 5 steps that will help you avoid project failure. The first one is all about defining project objectives and I’ll let him discuss the rest in the interview.

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

Go ahead... ask a few people whether they think that preparing for and passing the PMP exam will actually make someone a better project manager. Most of them will tell you that they think not.

I’ve been a PMP trainer for the past 9 years and in all my online classes I have always tried to instill a sense of betterment in my students. Simply because I believe that if you take the approach that you are not just studying for the exam, but studying to improve your project management skills, then you will improve your skills.

And guess what? I’ve interviewed Peter Dakessian who recently passed his PMP exam and his approach was exactly that. Surprise.

So, if you are preparing for your PMP exam and you would like to follow my school of thought, and use your exam prep to both pass the exam and improve your skills, then Peter is the man for you.