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This is the third of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

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This is the fourth and final special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

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This episode is sponsored by:

In today’s episode I am talking with Kristine Hayes Munson, PMP.

Kristine was my first ever interview guest and she has been on the program several times since then. She has come back because of some recent developments on her team: They have had some layoffs and her team lost a number of people. “How do you deal with that?” is the question of the day and many of you may have to go through a similar situation.

You might be leading a project team that loses some of its members or, like Kristine, you might be the manager of a team of project managers and the economy is forcing you to shrink. Kristine and I talk about the approach that she has found effective in helping your team cope with this situation.

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In this week we revisit Episode 34 of the PM Podcast.

That particular episode was released on May 27, 2006 and it was an interview with Kristine Hayes Munson on her methodology of managing projects in an organizational environment where the project team has no formal authority. It was called "Getting It Done". Until today, the episode has been listened to just about 31,000 times and Kristine’s presentation on the topic is nearing 50,000 downloads.

So we thought that it might be a good idea to revisit the process of Getting It Done and see what she has learned. After all, almost 2 years (and not 1 year as I claim during the interview) have passed, Kristine has presented her process to a number of professional organizations in the USA and she has tweaked and perfected it. So here are the Lessons Learned from Getting It Done.

Play Now:

This is the first of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This is the second of four special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production. The Japanese word kanban is a common everyday term meaning "signboard" or "billboard" and lacks the specialized meaning that this word has acquired in English. According to Taiichi Ohno, the man credited with developing JIT, kanban is a means through which JIT is achieved.

It was out of a need to maintain high level of improvements that the kanban system was devised by Toyota. Kanban became an effective tool to support the running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.

In project management, Kanban can be described as a signaling system to trigger action. We welcome Eric Landes (http://aspadvice.com/blogs/elandes/default.aspx) and we get a wonderful introduction to Kanban. We discuss what Kanban is, what its benefits are, how it overlaps with project management, what you see when walking into a Kanban environment, if it works in an environment where no physical products are produced and we introduce you to a great number of resources.

And in our Gizmo's segment we present The Project Perfect Whitepaper Index. It contains about 100 white papers on project management topics. Sign up for the Project Perfect White Paper Mailing List and you will receive an email whenever a new paper is published. Highly recommended.

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This episode is is a continuation of last week's discussion with Eric Landes on how to use Kanban in Project Management. Last time we looked at the theory of Kanban and today we look at the practice. Specifically we are going to discuss how Eric introduced Kanban in their department at Robert Bosch as a case study.

We’ll start out with the overall goal they had set themselves and then move pretty quickly to the hands on of how it was implemented, how the team received the change, how the customer received the change, the learning curve, the metrics used, improvements as compared to before and Eric will also give you his recommendations of what worked and what didn’t work for them so that you can try implementing Kanban yourself but avoid some of the pitfalls.

And then you are even going to hear a segment of our discussion from AFTER we stopped the official recording.

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A little earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in an online webinar from gantthead (http://www.gantthead.com). Mark Perry (from http://www.botinternational.com/pmo-podcasts.html) and I each gave a presentation on a specific topic on setting up a PMO. Mark's presentation discussed constituent and non-constituent focused project management offices, in which he conveyed the message that a PMO which is not focusing on the needs of its customers will eventually fail. And he had a great case study in support of this.

My presentation - the one which you see in this episode - is titled The 4-week PMO. This is a 90 minute presentation, which for the purpose of the online project management webinar was shortened to about 40 minutes. At some point I hope to turn the complete presentation into one of our PM Lectures. But for now, here is my approach that will give you a roadmap that enables you to set up your initial PMO framework in about 4 weeks.

Watch the Video:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_111_OT_2008_12-26_-_No_PMI_Methodology.m4v

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The new PMBOK® Guide 4th Edition will be available on Dec 31 2008. We take this opportunity to talk about one of the bigger misconceptions that people have about the PMBOK® Guide: They think that is is a methodology.

In this regard, you may hear many people say that they are "using the PMI Methodology" on their project or that they have "implemented the PMBOK methodology at work". In this presentation we explain why the PMBOK Guide is not a methodology, but a framework.

This is one of our Premium "Overtime" Episodes, which are normally reserved to the subscribers of the Premium PM Podcast. However, this is also the first of many presentation style episodes that we will publish, so it is made available to everyone, so that you can see what you would receive with your subscription to The Premium PM Podcast.

Watch the Video:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_117_2009_04_17_-_PMO_Value.mp4

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In December of 2008 I was invited to be the host at the 2009 PMO Summit in Coconut Grove, Florida. As the host, it was my privilege to set the tone of the day and begin with a short, 10 minute keynote presentation to set the tone for summit.

I decided that (because I had never seen anything like it before) that I would create a short survey to determine the value of the PMO. I did so and over 500 people responded. This video shows the results of this survey.

It was at that PMO summit that I met Terry Doerscher from Planview and you have heard him as a guest in the previous 2 episodes. In one of them he presented the PMO 2.0 Survey Results. So it was indeed interesting for me to see that other people had done similar surveys and it was also interesting to see that our surveys both complemented and contradicted each other a bit. This was definitely due to the fact that his survey was much more in-depth while this one here was really just trying to take the pulse of the podcast audience.

Watch the Video:

Audio only:

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From December 8-10 I attended the PMO Summit 2008. This event was organized by IQPC who had asked me to chair the event. I agreed and so I flew to Florida and acted as the Master of ceremonies (so to speak) for 2 days.

The event itself was a success. We had 2 days full of presentations & workshops. I met a lot of new people, hopefully gained a few more listeners for the Podcast and I had a fabulous Italian dinner and you’ll see part of that dinner during the show.

I already did a similar review with Mark Perry from the PMO Podcast and that discussion was released to the listeners of the Premium Podcast. If you want to become a premium listener and receive additional episodes of the PM Podcast then please stop by at the website and click on the  Premium Subscription button at the top left

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Another year has gone by and it has been full of exciting, boring, successful and (yes) failed projects that have been managed throughout the world. And it has been my pleasure to bring some of these projects and the means by which we lead and manage them to you.

But now it’s time to close out the year 2008 and have some project management fun. This means that I am opening up the vault of bad recordings and in this episode of The PM Podcast you are going to hear all the things that didn’t go as planned during the production of The PM Podcast.

Yes, this is the bloopers show, in which I lay bare all the ah, uhm, coughs and the times when I stumbled over difficult word combinations.

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A couple of days ago I returned from the 2008 PMO Summit in Orlando Florida. It was 2 days of excellent presentations that have taught me many new and current concepts of Project Management Offices (PMO) but which have also confirmed much of what I knew.

Mark Perry from The PMO Podcast also participated at the summit. I invited Mark to come on the program and give me his views of what he has learned. So he and I got together to discuss what we have learned from each presentation during the conference.

This is the first of two reviews that I am going to do on the summit. This one with Mark is only for the Premium Subscribers.

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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.