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This episode is sponsored by Wrike:

Have you ever wondered what the formal definition of a project is? Or what the main elements of a project charter should be? How software can assist you in project management? What you should include as part of your PM Planning toolkit? If there are times when the baseline doesn't refer to the complete project plan? What the most effective group creativity techniques are in eliciting requirements? Or what the best way is to avoid scope creeep?

I could go on and on and on with questions like these, because I have a copy of The Project Management Answer Book, written by Jeff Furman. It's full of questions and answers like these. Jeff intended and wrote this book as an easy-to-use Q&A reference, that explain key project management concepts in bite-size pieces, including hundreds of hands-on tips and best practices for us PMs. He included diagrams, study aids and Top 10 lists to help PMs prepare for the PMP® & related certification exams.

In his foreword, Andy Crowe says the following about the book: The Project Management Answer book covers an amazing breadth of topics. The advice it offers is concise and straightforward. It is brimming with wisdom from someone who faced these questions in the real world and has sifted through the various theories and practices to find what works.

With the Project Management Book of Knowledge 7th Edition being worked on, it's always good to stay up to date with the basics.

Would you like to win a copy? That's easy! As always we are giving away 1 copy to our paying premium Podcast listeners and 1 copy is up for grabs. All you have to do is go to our Facebook Fan Page, find the notice about the book giveaway and leave a comment. We will draw the winners around the 9th of Feb 2011. So make sure you stop by before then.

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This is a "special" episode of The PM Podcast in which we announce the giveaway of 20 books.

Peter Taylor (The Lazy Project Manager)[Update: the website is no longer available, so we removed the link] wrote a new book called The Lazy Blogger, focusing on various stories from his project management career. This book is for sale on Peter's website and costs £3.50 [Update: the website is no longer available, so we removed the link] out of which £3.00 are donated to the UK Cancer Research.

We have purchased 20 copies of this book in support of Peter's effort and we are giving away this book to our listeners. 10 copies go to our paying premium subscribers and 10 copies go to the free listeners.

To participate in this giveaway please go to The PM Podcast Facebook Fan Page, look for the 20 books giveaway announcement and leave a comment. The winners will be drawn on January 31, 2011.

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This episode is not about project management. It's about how to find your next project management job.

This is a premium episode. And normally, that means that only our paying, premium subscribers can listen to it. But we have decided that for a second time in just 2 weeks we are giving everyone access to this premium episode.

Why? Because this episode is once again not about project management per se, but it is about job searching strategies. In particular, it is a discussion with Career Coach Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com) about a presentation he recently gave called: Career Networking with a Purpose. And because there are so many PMs out there looking for a job, I found that it's important to let everyone hear this and help them find a job. 

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by Wrike:

This episode is not about project management. It's about how to find your next project management job.

It looks like the economy is recovering. After a couple of years of going down there are now many encouraging signals that indicate an upswing. And that means... there are once again more projects going to be started and companies will start hiring project managers.

If you remember, a few months ago we had a group of recruiting experts on the program who gave us their job search insights. Because I know that so many project managers are looking for a job right now, I decided to invite one of these experts, Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com) back onto our program to present to us "30 ideas of a successful job search". Tim collected and published these ideas as part of a book with the same name. But don't worry! We didn't bring onto the program to sell you his book, we brought him here to talk about his ideas. The book itself is free.

You'll hear in the interview that while Tim's book is free he also offers a real paper-based version. And as always... we are giving away 2 copies. One of these copies automatically goes to our premium listeners and the other one is up for grabs for anyone. Are you interested? No problem... just go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the announcement with the book giveaway and just add a comment. Anyone who leaves a comment on this book giveaway notice gets a chance to win. And obviously 1 copy is reserved for our premium listeners.

Which brings us to the winners of our last book giveaway: We had two copies of Elizabeth Harrin's book "Social Media for Project Managers" to give away. And the winners are...

• Kareem Shaker was selected at random from among all the people who left a comment on facebook
• And from among our premium listeners the lucky winner is... Josephine Brookes from Surrey in England.