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On May 1st 2010 I presented "The 4-week PMO" at the PMI Atlanta Chapter's Professional Development Day. This video gives you a few impressions from the event.

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A little while back Bill Duncan published an article on the importance of clearly (and I really mean clearly) differentiating between the terms scope and work.

Everyone seems to agree on the importance of scope, but there is much less agreement on what it is and where to find it. By focusing on a project’s “product” (whether tangible or intangible), project managers create greater clarity around the implication of all changes.

His reasoning was that by doing so you get greater clarity in regards to what changes on your project should be considered as scope changes, you improve your communication with your customer and by applying "discover-define-deliver" you add another layer of clarity.

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Earlier this month, the ASAPM (The American Society for Advancement of Project Management) released their latest standard. It's called "aPro: asapm Performance Rated Organization". You can find it at https://apro.asapm.org/.

My guest today Bill Duncan, who serves as the Certification Chair on the board of directors of the ASAPM. Many of you will recognize his name, as he was the primary author of the original PMBOK® Guide. But that's a story for another time. Today, we're discussing the purpose of the aPRO standard. We'll look at what organizations should consider being rated in this way, benefits and competitive advantage of this rating, how you actually get certified and much, much more.

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This episode of The PM Podcast was supposed to feature an interview with a representative from PMI to talk about the recently updated CCRS. That's their Continuing Certification Requirements System.

However, 24 hours before we were scheduled to do the interview we became the latest victim of Murphy's Law: I got a phonecall from PMI letting me know that my interview guest has a bad case of laryngitis. So he can't really participate in a spoken interview. So the #1 law in project management - Murphy's Law - strikes again to bring heartache, pain and tears to a project manager. Me in this case.

Well... that got me thinking about all the various laws that we have in project management. So we will be reviewing the following laws together: Murphy's Law, Boyles laws, Brownian Motion Rule of Bureacracies, Laws of computer programming,The Peter Principle, The Pareto'Principle, Old Engineer's Law, Gordon's First Law, Golub's Laws of Computerdom, Horstman's Law of Project Management, Klipstein's Laws, Ninety-ninety Rule of Project Schedules, Parkinson's Law, Q's Law, Vance's Rule of 2 1/2, The Student Syndrome, Parkinson's Principle of Non-Origination, Theory of the International Society of Philosophic Engineering, Brooks's Law and The Law of diminishing returns.

We also announce the winners of The PDU Podcast promotional giveaway.

Question of the Week: Did we forget to review any important laws and principles of project management? Please leave a comment and let us know!