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Do you have a PMP® or PgMP® certificate? Then this announcement will interest you!

As a PMP/PgMP you have to earn 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) every 3 years. Here at The PM Podcast you can earn 15 of these PDUs for free. And starting on April 2nd 2010 we are going to offer The PDU Podcast at www.pducast.com. With this new podcast you will be able to earn 20 PDUs per year.

The benefits for you are obvious! You already know how to use a podcast and now with The PDU Podcast you can sit back, relax and let the PDUs come to you. Month after month.

Listen in for the details and get a 20% discount on The PDU Podcast.

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Today's episode is sponsored by the 7th Annual Project Management Conference for the Drug & Device Industry. The conference takes place from April 12-14 2010 at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort & Convention Center in Orlando Florida. Learn all about cutting-edge tools and techniques to help you lead your team confidently and walk away with clear strategies for achieving project, program and portfolio success. To learn more, please visit www.iirusa.com/pdd.

I have a confession to make, and that is that I have moved over to the "dark side" of project management.

Don't worry - I'm neither wearing a black suite, cape or breathing apparatus, nor do I now call myself "Darth Cornelius".

But I have moved from being a Project Manager to the dark side and I'm now... a Project Sponsor. So let's take a look at my very first experience as a project sponsor and to keep it interesting we will hear from 10 other people what they love and hate about their own project sponsors.

Question of the Week:

Do we project managers make good or bad project sponsor? Please leave a comment and let me know!

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Are your projects complex?

And if your answer is "Yes of course they are complex" then how do you first of all measure this complexity and second and more importantly how do you manage project complexity?

Is it just a question of using standardized project management approaches, PM processes or maybe a project management office (PMO)?

These are some of the basic questions that I discuss in this episode with Jerry Manas. Jerry Manas has been a guest previously on our show about various project management topics. Today we discuss how to successfully manage complex projects with simplicity, clarity and focus.

Click "Read more..." below to read the transcript.

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Last week we heard how Jerry Manas uses simplicity, clarity and focus to approach managing the ever increasing complexity in business processes. This means that project management processes consequentially are getting more and more complex as well. And we project managers need to be able to handle them.

But what does this approach actually look like in real life? What exactly does he do and how does he do it? Where does he begin his work and what hands-on advice does he have for us. In particular I want to know from him what the first 3-4 steps are that we should take when we begin working on a complex project.

Click "Read more..." below to read the transcript.