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Two weeks ago I was at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver Colorado. For two days I was surrounded by about 4,000 other project managers. I listened to a number of great and not so great presentations and I also participated in a few meetings of the PMI’s New Media Council. There were presentations on all kinds of topics including scope in project management.

My biggest problem is that in such moments it is very difficult for me to turn my brain off and more often than not thoughts collide and synapses meet and out come usually some good ideas and insights on project management. I have a personal issue with scope control in project management! The scope of what I thought I would be thinking about is spiralling, and I think that's a good thing! It shows the value of attending these events.

And over the coming episodes, I would like to share my thoughts with you, here on The Premium PM Podcast.

And I thought that since it is around Halloween, I start out with something CREEPY. In particular, Scope Creep.

To be precise, scope creep and the fact that it isn’t really all that bad a thing to happen on your project. In fact, I recommend that we should all embrace scope creep on our projects. Understanding scope creep is a crucial part of project scope management, but not one that we need to avoid.

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In part 1 of this Podcast you heard the voice of Brantlee Underhill, who heads up PMI's Virtual Communities Project. Since this project aims at replacing the current SIG structure with a centralized model and thereby dissolving the SIGs this means that the one voice we definitely want to hear is that of the SIGs.

That is why we got together with Derry Simmel, who is the PMO SIG’s Vice Chair Membership. We met Derry at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver and - as you might suspect - we get to hear a slightly different view of the VCP project than in part one.

If you happen to be a board member of another SIG and you would like your voice heard then please let us know. We’ll be happy to put you on.

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Are you by any chance a member of a PMI Specific Interest Group (SIG)? If so, then you will definitely be interested in what today’s interview guest has to say. We had a chance to speak with Brantlee Underhill at the PMI® Global Congress 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Brantlee heads up the PMI’s Virtual Communities Project. In a nutshell, this project aims at creating a unified and centralized infrastructure for all SIG activities. The bold step that the PMI is taking in creating this centralized approach is that the independent SIGs will be dissolved and reintegrated into the PMI itself.

As you can imagine, there are many viewpoints on such a move depending on which side of the fence you are on. Some think it’s a good idea and some don’t.

The voice that you hear today is that of the PMI. We also had a chance to speak with a board member from one of the SIGs that is affected by this move and we’ll get to hear him in part 2. And there will probably be a part 3 and 4 as we look for other voices on this topic..

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview...

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In the last episode, Margaret Meloni, MBA, PMP and Cornelius Fichtner, PMP explored how to keep your cool when you are dealing with Jerks at work. However, there is an increasing focus on project managers in regards that they are now expected to become project leaders. This means that you not only have a lot more responsibility but you also will need different skills. So we are now going to jump a lot deeper into this subject and look at this topic from the point of view of a project leader.

We look at how you handle jerks on your projects in such a way that everyone can walk away feeling good.