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.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

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.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

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

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

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

This episode is sponsored by:

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:

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

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

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

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.

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

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.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

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.

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

This episode is sponsored by:

In this episode of The project management podcast we once again welcome back both David Shirley and Rich Maltzman from www.earthpm.com to talk about green project management.

We start out with a short discussion on certification programs for project managers and what Dave and Rich are doing to include the aspect of “green” into these programs. But then we are going to jump into the “how” of green PM. What exactly is it that you do to include aspects of green into your project during initiation, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling and finally also during closing of your project.

That is then followed by the discussion of lifecycle environmental cost. If you remember, Philip Crosby said that “Quality is free” and you can learn today that Dave and Rich feel the same way about green.

And lastly, you have heard of Earned Value Management (EVM), right? But have you ever heard of Environmental Earned Value Management (EEVM)? You definitely will hear about it in our discussion.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

We are a few days late with this episode of The PM Podcast because I was gone for the weekend. My wife and I celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary and so we decided to go to Catalina Island, which is both a tourist destination and a nature reserve just off the coast of Orange County here in CA. So that makes this a couple of days late.

But wait… did I just say a couple of days…? No no no! We are just about ONE YEAR LATE! The interview that you will hear in this episode was recorded in late 2008. Getachew Teklemariam and I got together at that time, recorded this interview, I got it ready for publication and promptly forgot about it. That is until I received another email from Getachew about 3 weeks ago and I was wondering if we ever published this. No we hadn’t. As such, you could say that this particular sub-project is just about one year late...

In the interview, we discuss the overall state of project management in Ethiopia, the available training infrastructure, the industries using project management, how project management in Ethiopia could generally be strengthened and of course, what we project managers around the world can do to help.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Earlier this week I spent a couple of days in Florida at the Gartner Group’s Project Portfolio Management and IT Summit. We were at the beautiful Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando. Here I had the chance to sit down with Mark Langley who is the PMI’s Chief Operating Officer.

In this interview we learn why PMI has sent a delegation to this event, we hear some of the feedback that PMI has received on the recent release of the 2nd editions of The Standard for Program Management and The Standard for Portfolio Management, we discuss the challenges that organizations face in regards to program and portfolio management and of course how PMI can help organizations deal with these challenges.

During our conversation we also touch several times upon the upcoming PMI North American Congress, which will be held coincidentally in the very same convention center where this interview was recorded. I won’t be able to be there myself but I strongly recommend that you attend. I have always found PMI Congresses to be a great way to connect to my peers.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) describes a methodical approach for analyzing and collectively managing a group of current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The fundamental objective of the PPM process is to determine the optimal mix and sequencing of proposed projects to best achieve the organization's overall goals. Oftentimes companies have implemented a rigorous process for selection, management and administration of their project portfolio.

Agile software development on the other hand refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams.

Contrary to popular belief, agile methods still promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals. These approaches to doing the work are reflected in the agile project management manifesto.

It’s the seeming incompatibility between these two approaches – the need for rigorous management of your portfolio vs. the adaptive approach of agile project management – that is at the core of our discussion with Rick Moreau, Field Enablement Director of Compuware (www.compuware.com).

We learn from Rick how these two approaches can indeed be brought together into a blended approach, how Compuware is using their own internal product development almost like a case study to prove it and how the need for portfolio management rigor can still be achieved under this mixed approach.

Did you like this episode of The PM Podcast? Did you like it well enough to take two minutes and go to the Apple Podcast directory to give us a rating or review?  Yes? I would really appreciate it!  Please go to www.project-management-podcast.com/reviews and tell the world how well you think we are doing.

Play Now:

This episode is sponsored by:

Has your project ever been audited? Was it a good experience or would you much rather spend 2 hours at the dentist instead? We met up with Elizabeth Harrin, author of Project Management in the Real World , at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver last month and we discussed not project audits, but its cousin Peer Reviews.

We define what a peer review is and how it compares to a formal project audit. We shine a light onto the fact that peer reviews will help you as a PM to keep honest. In particular during the more hectic times of a project, when it’s easy to say that “I just don’t have the time to have the risk management meeting this week”.

And of course, we look at how you should prepare for a peer review both from the perspective of someone who is giving and someone who is receiving such a review.

We also introduce you to a new Gizmo: It’s a new website called PM Opinions where you can read and write reviews on project management products and services.