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Question: What’s green and manages a project?

The answer isn’t “Kermit the frog” the answer is “All of us”.

At least that is the answer given by Rich Maltzman and David Shirley from www.earthpm.com. David and Rich are two experienced project managers who realized that green is a must because according to PMI, the world will spend 1/5 of its GDP on projects, a hefty $US12 Trillion this year alone.

That's a lot of energy that we put into projects and those projects will use energy, save energy, use resources, and save resources in ways we cannot yet imagine.

That is why they founded www.earthpm.com which is devoted to the intersection of Project Management and "Green" - where green has to do with preventing climate change, preserving resources, and getting things done effectively and efficiently, which should already be flowing in the 'green' blood of any project manager worth their weight in risk registers.

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In this episode of our program I am welcoming back Ron Holohan, PMP and Shawn Futterer, PMP to a roundtable discussion on the Project Management Office (PMO).

Ron works for a large consumer electronics company and a number of project managers directly report to him. He also created the company’s internal PMO portal. Shawn works for a telecommunications provider and is in charge of one of several large projects and also has other project managers who are reporting to him.

We begin our roundtable with Ron’s definition of what a PMO is, compare how this fits with all our understanding and then we discuss various aspects, tips & tricks from our PMOs.

The winners of two copies of Peter Taylor's book The Lazy Project Manager are:

• Marcos Diclei Barros – Toronto, Canada
• Shannon Vettes – Premium Subscriber

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Would you like to be twice as productive on your projects and still leave the office early? Peter Taylor, PMP (www.thelazyprojectmanager.com) has a suggestion for you: Become a "lazy" project manager. Peter is well-known on social media for project managers for his fun presentation style and knowledge of the industry. In his book The Lazy Project Manager he reveals how adopting a more focused approach to life, projects and work can make you twice as productive.

In today's interview we talk about productive laziness and how you can apply Peter's simple techniques and approaches in your own projects. We look at how to manage them from a 'Productive Lazy' point of view. Peter is not by nature, a lazy person and neither is our show host Cornelius Fichtner, but both of them have many other things to do in life, beyond the projects and podcasts that they manage.

Therefore, Peter's approach helps to balance life, projects and work. And of course, if you are involved in project manager coaching and mentoring for your team, you can pass on the tips to your colleagues.

Agile teams are by their nature set up to be productive and track work, but if you have the role of project manager in SAFe agile or, indeed any other agile environment, you will still find this interview eye-opening. I certainly did!

And as always when we speak to a published author you get a chance to win a copy of Peter's book. Listen in to participate and you may find The Lazy Project Manager in your mailbag.

The winners of our last contest where you could win a copy of Mark Perry's book "Business Driven PMO Setup" are:

• Anthony Warrix
• Stanley Kolodziej

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"With the exception of some in the vendor community who have a biased perspective toward their products and some in the community of pundits who simply have an outdated perspective, most contemporarry information technology and Project Management Office (PMO) executives think in terms of architecture, not tools. Tools and applications are important, because they provide individuals and departments with rich feature sets and database-driven capabilities, but it is the architecture that provides integrated information management to the enterprise."

These are Mark Perry's opening words when he discusses the architecture based approach of setting up a PMO in his book “Business Driven PMO Setup”. In this second interview Mark and I delve into this chapter of his book and look at the available tools, analyze architecture approaches and most importantly we talk about the components of a solid PMO architecture.