Episode 010: PM Training

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In today's show you will get to hear: Listener Feedback. Apple podcast tip. Project Management News. An interview with Diane Altwies from Outercore Inc. on project management training. And finally my cookbook on how to deliver advanced training to PMP® credential holders in your area.

Project Management in the News

- New Jersey Excellence in Technology Awards
- Dallas PMI Chapter Adds 444 New PMPs In September
- BLM project uncovers secrets of ghost town [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]
- A view into Google's inner workings

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.

Speaker 1 (00:10): [inaudible]

Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):

You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com. All send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Cornelius Fichtner (00:30):

Hello, and welcome to show number 10. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this is the Project Management Podcast for the 5th of November, 2005. And today you are going to get some training, but before we move on to the main section of the show as usual few announcements and things that I want to get off my chest, and we start out with a word from our sponsor. This episode of the project management podcast is sponsored by project load. Project load is a web based project management and time tracking tool, project load lets teams maintain and forecast their own tasks helps project managers track their projects, gives PMOs one place to view all projects and provides executives, valuable insight into exactly where their organization is spending their time. You can find project This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now the announcements that I have today are first about the sound quality. Those of you who have listened to show number nine and show number nine and a half in particular, you may have noticed that the sound quality wasn't really up to what it was or what it used to be.

Cornelius Fichtner (01:42):

Well, I tried a new microphone and I wasn't really all too happy with it. So I went back to my old microphone here and I hope to upgrade to a better microphone sometime down the road. Then I'll also notice that because I put out two shows so quickly after each other, that some of you may have missed show nine. So here's a little trick. I know that most of you are using iTunes to download the show. So go to iTunes, open up iTunes and select edit preferences. And then a dialogue window will open. And there you click on the podcast tab. And in the podcast tab, you have various selections that you can do. And there is one selection that says when new episodes are available and there you select download all in that way. When you set it that way, it will automatically download all the latest episodes of every show that you subscribe to.

Cornelius Fichtner (02:40):

It's quite handy. If you are like me, I subscribed to various science shows and they sometimes put out two, three, four on the same day and it'll download all four or five of them fully, automatically. Don't have to do anything on to your feedback. And man, there was a lot of feedback that I got from you this week. And let me start out with an it trainer. Well, this is a training show today. So this is from Christian J Mark Lee. He's an it trainer and he writes, hello, Cornelius. I have just begun project management practices at my company about three to four months ago. My plan is to create a PMO in the next two years. I've enjoyed your podcast as it helps me better understand the PM field. I would like to know if you might want, if you might have plans to discuss how a PM can balance several large scale projects going on simultaneously.

Cornelius Fichtner (03:38):

Good idea. Good idea. I will definitely go into that topic sometime down the road. I've been a implementation project manager and I've had to do exactly that. And I'll give you a few best practices on how I did that. It's difficult, but it's doable. The next one I got is from Harry Fisher. And this is an interesting one. Harry writes, I really enjoy your podcast. Thanks for contributing to the PM community. Here it comes last week, the ASQ quality progress magazine accepted an article, which he attached as well. And I was wondering if you might like me to record a short summary of this article. I read through the article I find, well, this is a good one. And I wrote back to Harry telling him, yep. Why don't you send over a sound file and we'll put it up right here on the show. Absolutely no problem right there.

Cornelius Fichtner (04:35):

Then when you go to my blog, that's pmpodcast.blogspot.com. You will be able to read the comment which Anne Babiak left and you left that in response to the PMO show. And it's a very long one, but, uh, the essence of this all is that the number one takeaway that they have had in terms of templates, they used was the, uh, meeting notes to document the meeting notes of the project management meetings. Because when there were problems, the committee that was mitigating these problems, they could go back and they could review these meeting notes. And thus the project managers were usually vindicated. And because these meeting notes help them to well cover their asses more or less, we put it, bluntly people in the future then began to actually use more and more of the templates that they provided for their PMO. So thank you N Babiak for this comment.

Cornelius Fichtner (05:45):

Very nice. I appreciate that. And folks, you can read the whole thing up on the website. Another one I got is from, uh, [inaudible] actually [inaudible] last name and he writes, I like your informal way of communicating about the PM topics. Sometimes this is taken way too seriously. I agree. I'd like to, I try to put a little bit of humor into what I do and, and I enjoy this one very much. I communicated the project management part cost to the Latin America project managers in HP, Hewlett Packard. Well, perfect. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Your helping me to get the word out here. I got, uh, I got one more here. This one is from Jeff Schmidt and he tells me that he's been listening to the project management podcast while he works out in the morning. So he works out both his body and his mind.

Cornelius Fichtner (06:45):

Your shows are a good way to get up to speed on the news in the world of project management and here, pardon me. And here are some real world application of the skills needed to be a good project manager and he wrote to us from Austin, Texas. Well, thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it very much as feedback from you here. Very nice. All right. Those of you who don't use a podcatcher software like iTunes or Doppler or one of the automatic downloaders, I'd just like to remind you that there is a new show notification that you can subscribe to just go to my blog and you will see on the left hand side, the little announcement that says never miss a show, just click on that subscribe. And I will send you a quick email. Once a new show is up and you will not miss a show, you will however, miss a show on Saturday, the November 26.

Cornelius Fichtner (07:45):

Actually everybody will miss that particular show because this is the Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States. For those of you outside of the U S this is the number one holiday here, and me and my wife, we will be traveling to Arizona, to our family and friends, actually friends in Phoenix, family in Tucson. And I will not be producing a show that week. So no show on Saturday, November 26th. All right. And, uh, there was a lot that was happening this week in the news. And here we go with our next segment, I got five items for you. Five, six, five, or six. Here we go with the news.

Cornelius Fichtner (08:36):

The first news item is called a view into Google's inner workings. And this comes to us from the October 25th vortex, 2005, where Douglas Merrill, who is the senior director of information technology at spoke and a quick overview of this one here. He told them that for Google information is enlightenment and not power. And the entire corporation is compelled to give information freely and learn from each other. That's a different approach. In most companies, information is kept tightly and close to your chest. I want to give it away. Um, also they talk about the innovative innovation strategy that they have at Google and the way they do that is they keep their employees challenged and they move them around from project to project. As an employee at Google, you only spend about 12 to 18 months in one area, and then you get moved around. Of course, that causes a lot of well movement and a lot of loss of information, but they do have a, what they call a Google project database at the center of the soul and note that they call it a reporting system and not a project tracking tool. That's also interesting and very, very different thing here is that everybody from engineering to sales, to sales, to folks who sweep the floors can read this Google project database and create commentary on anything within the database. So if you work at Google, you have access to their information database and you can input your ideas. Very interesting concept right here at Google.

Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.