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Nehme E. Abouzeid is the guest in today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast™ and we look at project management in the hotel, casino and hospitality business. Nehme works for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in Las Vegas, Nevada, the town that 15 of the 20 largest hotels in the world call their home. Thus, the projects that Nehme was involved in were major, business critical projects. We hear about a ticketing system that he helped implement for their entertainment center, next is a convention system for the hotel, then we talk about his process improvement projects and we finally explore a retail system project where the complete retail system for a series of stores had to be replaced. In just one night.

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Ron Holohan, PMP. We talk about his role as a Program Manager who has 5 project managers reporting directly to him. He works for a consumer electronics company in a weak matrix organization, which offers challenges of it’s own. We take a look at his company’s processes, how they came to have their current PM methodology and how a project budget is created. We also introduce you to a new Gizmo. This week we look at the 20 Minute IT Manager, a training and mentoring program that works almost like a podcast.

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On the last day of the year we are not going to worry about project management. Instead we are going to have some fun. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for you) not every episode and interview that we record is perfect on the first take. Sometimes my tongue or the tongues of my guests and helpers gets twisted and the strangest things come out. And more often than not, they are rather funny. And here they are: All the bleepers and bloopers that got cut out of our normal episodes as a 5 minute potpourri for you.

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One of the projects that our show host Cornelius Fichtner, PMP is managing is showing signs of trouble. It is a small, offshore software development project and the quality of the code returned is not good. Because it is a small project that is in trouble there are one or two things that you need to do differently in order to rescue it than you would do on a large troubled project. In today’s episode Cornelius talks about the three steps that he took in order to begin turning things around.

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In January of 2008 I went on my first cruise, which took me to the Mexican Riviera. Of course, I never leave home without the podcast recording equipment, so it is no surprise that I took a few moments on the ship to record a couple of short episodes for you. This is the first one and I am introducing you to a book titled Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book is all about productivity and how to get your to-do-list under control. However, this is not meant to be a book review in the traditional sense - in this episode I present to you my journey over the past 3-4 months of how I used and implemented this book in order to get my hundreds of tasks under control.

Buy David Allen's Getting Things Done from Amazon...

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Thomas Cutting, PMP from The Cutting's Edge [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]. Thomas has been a guest on our program twice before. The topics that we discussed with him then were "Authority" and "How to become a Project Manager?" In this episode we take a peek into his life as a project manager, consultant and speaker on project management. We are also launching a new show segment called Gizmos in which we introduce you to a variety of tools that help make your everyday life as a project manager easier. Our featured Gizmo is a free Microsoft project viewer called Live Project from Kadonk at http://www.kadonk.com.

We have finished our Book Giveaway of one copy every week of Gerard Hill's The Complete PMO Handbook second edition. The winners are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada
Book 2: Arnošt Katolický, Czechoslovakia
Book 3: Özgen Güngör, Berlin, Germany
Book 4: Donald Damore, Cumberland, RI, USA

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Wait... what's that on your back? Could that be a Monkey? In the course of our working days all of us acquire duties, chores and tasks. Some of them are important and they need to be addressed so that we can finish our deliverables. Others must be considered as "Monkeys" - tasks that we got stuck with and now don't seem to be able to get rid of even though we might not be the right person to take care of them. And we all wonder - how did I get stuck with this? Mike Graupner, PMP describes to us today the techniques he uses to address the Monkeys in his life. We talk about Monkey Management in general and we also look at how this translates into managing the Monkeys on your projects.

Click here to download the presentation that we refer to during the interview.

We also continue our book giveaway. Gerard Hill is offering four free copies of his book "The Complete Project Management Office Handbook (Second Edition)" to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast. Listen to the announcements to hear how to participate.

The winners of the books so far are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada
Book 2: Arnošt Katolický, Czechoslovakia
Book 3: Özgen Güngör, Berlin, Germany
Book 4: Drawing will be on Sunday, December 16th

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When you ask 10 Project Management Office (PMO) Managers about the functions that their PMO offers internally then you will very likely receive 10 answers. That is nothing unusual or unexpected because a PMO has to be built to fit the requirements of each company. The PMO does what the company needs it to do. Some PMOs are small, some are large. Some offer limited project support some are all encompassing. But now ask: What is truly the primary function of a PMO? In his book “The Complete Project Management Office Handbook” (Second Edition) Gerard Hill of The Hill Consulting Group proposes that the PMO is really a Business Solution. So in our interview with Gerard we not only discuss the PMO Model from his book which consists of the 5 PMO Capabilities and 20 PMO Functions but we also look at how to set the focus of your PMO, so that it truly becomes a business solution.

Gerard Hill is offering four free copies of his book "The Complete Project Management Office Handbook (Second Edition)" to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast. Listen to the episode to learn how to participate.

The winners of the books so far are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada

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Are you currently studying for the PMP Exam? Wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to someone who just recently passed their PMP Exam talk about it? You can! Today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast™ features an Interview with Ron Holohan who just recently passed his exam. In today’s episode we learn how he studied, what he would do differently if he had to do it again, his recommendations for all those among you who are currently studying for the exam and many other golden nuggets of information from and about the PMP Exam. We also have 3 helpful resources to support you in your PMP Studies.

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Joy Gumz, PMP. While most of us are project managers, Joy Gumz focuses on project audits. Her company is Project Auditors, LLC and she travels the world as a project auditor helping companies identify troubled areas on their projects before they become real problems. Would you like to know what issues she encounters most often during her project audits? Listen in. We also introduce you to several Helpful Resources that will help you to explore the topic of Project Auditing in more detail.

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How many project management books do you read per year? 1, 2, 3, 5 or even more? If you do read them then you will know the value that new books have in our profession: they take us to the next level. Whether it is a book on Napoleon on Project Management or one that is called Surprise now you are a Software Project Manager they all move our profession forward. So what kind of thoughts would a new project management book titled “The Fiddler on the Project” evoke from you? From me, it evokes that if I were a rich man, I would probably invest in it. Our guest today is Rich Maltzman, PMP and he would like you to write this book for him. Yes… you read right – he wants you to write his book. At least parts of it. Listen to the interview to learn more and get involved in some project management social networking.

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Back in Episode 070 we tried something new. Instead of an in-depth interview on a particular topic, our host Cornelius Fichtner invited Dina Henry-Scott to a Project Management Conversation. The feedback on that particular episode was so encouraging, that we decided to do more conversations just like it. We will of course continue to have our in-depth feature interviews but going forward you can expect many more Project Management Conversations.

Today's Project Management Conversation is with Shawn Futterer who is a certified project management professional with a broad range of experience. He started his career in 1992 managing quality control projects for a small manufacturing company and is currently working in a PMO for a Fortune 50 telecommunications company where he supervises project managers for the North region. Over the course of his career, Shawn has managed projects of all shapes and sizes with budgets of up to $100M. Shawn has a keen interest in the methodologies, strategy, planning and operations. He has over fifteen years of hands-on project management experience and has led, consulted on or contributed to: process development efforts, various methodologies and multiple training programs. Shawn attributes a project managers success to their ability to provide a strategic view and a demonstrated ability to interact and communicate effectively with all levels of an organization.

As usual we also have our helpful resources and we give away a license to the project management methodology of our sponsor www.mpmm.com. The giveaway ends on August 27, 2007. Listen to this episode to learn how to participate.

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Monitoring and Evaluation has been used by nongovernmental organizations for evaluating programs for decades. For the European Union, the United Nations, the World Bank and other development banks, it is embedded in their organizational processes. Many have even published toolkits to promote understanding and adoption. For projects, processes for monitoring progress are far less established. Therefore, it is of little surprise that the quality of those monitoring processes can vary widely. For projects quality means at a minimum timeliness, relevance, reliability, accuracy, usability and credibility. Unless monitoring processes demonstrate these characteristics, they are unlikely to improve performance and enhance accountability. Our interview guest Joy Gumz from Project Auditors (www.projectauditors.com) has been working in the field of project auditing and project monitoring for quite some time. She wrote a paper titled "Why use a hammer when you need a wrench: Results-based monitoring and evaluation of projects" which she presented at the PMI® Global Congress in Budapest. Today, we discuss her findings.

We also introduce you to two helpful resources in the field of project monitoring and we announce the winner of our contest who will win one free license of the MPMM Project Methodology.

Click here to download Joy Gumz' presentation... (*.pps)

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Today's Project Management Conversation is with Cindy Sabin, PMP. We talk about the lessons learned from one of her past, worldwide projects. We hear about the importance of keeping the communications flow on such a project going as well as the need to understand who the decision makers & sponsors are. Then we move on to Cindy's current project. At the moment Cindy is in transition to a new job and she views her situation as a very large project. The product is herself and she discusses with us the three steps she identified for this journey.

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Today we are featuring a Project Management Conversation with Randy Magdaluyo whom we already met in Episode 73. This time we get a glimpse of the complexities that he as a project manager in the financial industry is faced with. I always found this aspect of project management to be one of the most fascinating facets. We all do the same thing, which is managing projects. But our industries are so different that by talking to a PM in engineering or the financial industry it almost seems that we are not working on the same general discipline. But in the end it is our job to get one task after the other completed, so that when all the tasks are completed, the project is done. And that is the beauty of project management - it may not look like we have the same job but we do.