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Globalization and internationalization continue to change the diversity of businesses and our projects. Corporate structures mirror these trends. However, it seems that “diversity” mostly focuses on gender, age or origin. And diversification of employees is not the objective of diversity management. Roland Dumont du Voitel (https://www.amontis.com/ - https://de.linkedin.com/pub/dr-roland-dumont-du-voitel/14/9b7/567) says that there is much more to it.

He says that building on diversity focused on individual talents and qualities changes both corporations and provides also higher levels of creativity. This applies even more to project structures than to corporations. In project management we see that diversity is not a goal in itself. Its importance comes from the tasks and objectives of the projects. Just think of the diversity you create with mergers, acquisitions, global software projects, or even offshoring of services.

So hear Roland take a look at the pros and cons of applying diversity management in a mature project management environment, review its impact on culture and management, but also discuss the resistance to that change.

Roland Dumont du Voitel will be speaking on the topic of the PMO and Capitalizing on Diversity on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. Find out more at https://projectzonecongress.com/ [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]

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In June of 2013 Bryan Barrow (https://nova-consulting.co.uk - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bryanbarrow) gave the project management presentation that he always wanted to give. It is titled The Project Manager’s Play Book and it compares many of the tactics and approaches used in American Football to what all of us do on our projects. Except that we project managers wear a lot less protective gear.

Bryan says that once you have seen his presentation “You will learn how to take a new project and deliver it with greater confidence, sense of purpose and sheer fun than you thought possible”. And of course we hope to get that kind of motivation across to you as well in this discussion.

And don’t forget that Bryan Barrow will be speaking on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. So if you hear this before April 2014 you can find out more at https://projectzonecongress.com/ [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]

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When it comes to identifying a reason for why so many projects fail then Bryan Barrow (https://nova-consulting.co.uk - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bryanbarrow) has a simple answer for you. He says that a root cause of poor project delivery is poor planning. But he also says that this is not a failure of project management, but instead this is a failure of project leadership.

So if poor planning is the culprit then there has to be a better way to plan our projects. Right? Right!

Bryan is an advocate of planning your project with index cards. So in our interview we are going to first discuss what the problem is with planning your project using sticky notes, and then we’ll look at the benefits of index card planning for your project, in particular on improved leadership, greater financial control, improved project governance and improved cross-department team-working and collaboration.

And by the way… Bryan Barrow will be speaking on the topic of Index Card Planning on April 29th at the 2014 Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt Germany. So if you are listening to this interview before April 2014 you can find out more at https://projectzonecongress.com/ [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Earn 37 PDUs:

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 (https://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!