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Episode 243: Achieve better Project Performance through Personal Organization (free)

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:
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Episode 243: Achieve better Project Performance through Personal Organization (free)If you want to know what the “best” way is for you to manage cost, time, resources or quality on your project, then you can open the PMBOK Guide or turn to any of a dozen project management methodologies out there and they will guide you. But what about the best for you as a project manager to be productive and organized? Where can that be found? Personally I don’t recall a single PM methodology or framework that addresses your or my work style and gives us the tools to improve.

To discuss one possible approach we welcome Brian Fee (www.linkedin.com/in/brianfee37) to the program, who says that having a personal set strategy for collecting, processing, organizing and reviewing information has helped him as a project manager. He believes that it is a worthwhile exercise for other project managers to consider their own strategy for staying organized.

This is because there is an assumed level of competence that project managers are expected to just have in terms of personal productivity; and it never seems to be directly taught or addressed in the educational process. We are expected to be able to handle a tremendous onslaught of incoming  information effectively and also be able to perform processes and manage projects. Brian believes that many PMs (and other professionals, too) feel a great deal of stress juggling the information they receive through email, voice mail, hallway conversations, or meetings.

This interview is about is his personal experience and many of his recommendations that will help inspire you and you set on the right track to improving your own personal productivity.

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Episode 242: Stakeholder Identification, Engagement & Expectation Management (Premium)

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Episode 242: Stakeholder Identification, Engagement & Expectation Management (Premium)In our first interview with Mario Henrique Trentim (http://br.linkedin.com/in/trentim/) we mainly focused on why stakeholders are important. We didn’t really talk about the how of identifying or engaging stakeholders, nor did we touch on stakeholder management. Let’s do that now.

We will once again open up Mario’s book Managing Stakeholders as Clients and learn about Mario’s approaches, tips, tricks and best practices to identify, engage and manage stakeholders.

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Episode 241: Why Worry about Stakeholders on your Project? (Free)

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:
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Episode 241: Why Worry about Stakeholders on your Project? (Free)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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Episode 240: Book Reviews: Do Nothing, Real Influence and Strategies for Project Sponsorship (Free)

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

Episode 240: Book Reviews: Do Nothing, Real Influence and Strategies for Project Sponsorship (Free)

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

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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Episode 239: Top 3 Reasons Why Projects Fail (and 5 Steps to Fight it!) (Free)

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