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The number of social media websites is sheer overwhelming. There are Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Myspace, Skype, Google Chat, Plurk, Bebo, Xing, Hi5, Orkut, Pownce and LinkedIn. And these are just the more popular ones. But why should you as a project manager care about this?

Bas de Baar (http://blog.softwareprojects.org/) thinks you should. Bas argues that social media will help you personally by growing your visibility within the worldwide community of project managers and he also argues that social media helps your worldwide, virtual project team to grow together faster and deliver better projects.

As we were recording the interview we requested live questions from our Twitter followers. Three of them responded in time and the questions from @CobPEZ, @CoachM and @jgodfrey were answered right there and then. It's the start of integrating social media into The PM Podcast as well.

Bas also offers a free video blog at http://blog.softwareprojects.org/category/video-chat [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link].

This Premium episode is available to all listeners. Enjoy!

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Last week's discussion with Bas de Baar on "Everything a Project Manager should know about Social Media" largely focused on how you as a project manager can use social media for career growth. We also touched upon how social media can be used in your projects.

In this Premium Episode we welcome Elizabeth Harrin (Author of Project Management in the Real World) to look more in depth into how a project manager can use Project Management 2.0 and Social Media on your projects. We discuss if and how we should use these tools, how confidentiality plays into this, how the increasing availability of easy to use online project management tools will turn the "technical" project management skills into a commodity and we touch upon the presentations that Elizabeth gave at the BPUG and APM on these topics.

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Are you working in a Project Management Office (PMO) or are you currently trying to set one up? Wouldn’t it be great if you could read the lessons learned files of over 20 PMO executives and subject matter experts and learn from their experience? We can help you.

In today’s episode we welcome Mark Perry (www.botinternational.com) who is the author of the book “Business Driven PMO Setup”. In this book, Mark merges his personal experience of working with over hundred PMOs with the knowledge of over 20 PMO experts from around the world. The book challenges various traditional approaches and strategies for the PMO and will show you how to implement a PMO using an extensively proven roadmap that is adaptable to any type or size organization.

And yes… you can of course win one of Mark's books - please listen in to learn how to participate.

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"With the exception of some in the vendor community who have a biased perspective toward their products and some in the community of pundits who simply have an outdated perspective, most contemporarry information technology and Project Management Office (PMO) executives think in terms of architecture, not tools. Tools and applications are important, because they provide individuals and departments with rich feature sets and database-driven capabilities, but it is the architecture that provides integrated information management to the enterprise."

These are Mark Perry's opening words when he discusses the architecture based approach of setting up a PMO in his book “Business Driven PMO Setup”. In this second interview Mark and I delve into this chapter of his book and look at the available tools, analyze architecture approaches and most importantly we talk about the components of a solid PMO architecture.

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Would you like to be twice as productive on your projects and still leave the office early? Peter Taylor, PMP (www.thelazyprojectmanager.com) has a suggestion for you: Become a "lazy" project manager. Peter is well-known on social media for project managers for his fun presentation style and knowledge of the industry. In his book The Lazy Project Manager he reveals how adopting a more focused approach to life, projects and work can make you twice as productive.

In today's interview we talk about productive laziness and how you can apply Peter's simple techniques and approaches in your own projects. We look at how to manage them from a 'Productive Lazy' point of view. Peter is not by nature, a lazy person and neither is our show host Cornelius Fichtner, but both of them have many other things to do in life, beyond the projects and podcasts that they manage.

Therefore, Peter's approach helps to balance life, projects and work. And of course, if you are involved in project manager coaching and mentoring for your team, you can pass on the tips to your colleagues.

Agile teams are by their nature set up to be productive and track work, but if you have the role of project manager in SAFe agile or, indeed any other agile environment, you will still find this interview eye-opening. I certainly did!

And as always when we speak to a published author you get a chance to win a copy of Peter's book. Listen in to participate and you may find The Lazy Project Manager in your mailbag.

The winners of our last contest where you could win a copy of Mark Perry's book "Business Driven PMO Setup" are:

• Anthony Warrix
• Stanley Kolodziej

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What do we project managers spend about 70% of our time on? That's right... communications.

So how would you like it, if you could be "lazy" on your projects about 70% of the time? Enter Peter Taylor, PMP (www.thelazyprojectmanager.com) whose book The Lazy Project Manager has some great advice on how to be "lazy" in your communications. Get the most out of your productive laziness and learn the top tips from Peter on how get the most out of your communications and still leave the office early.

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In this episode of our program I am welcoming back Ron Holohan, PMP and Shawn Futterer, PMP to a roundtable discussion on the Project Management Office (PMO).

Ron works for a large consumer electronics company and a number of project managers directly report to him. He also created the company’s internal PMO portal. Shawn works for a telecommunications provider and is in charge of one of several large projects and also has other project managers who are reporting to him.

We begin our roundtable with Ron’s definition of what a PMO is, compare how this fits with all our understanding and then we discuss various aspects, tips & tricks from our PMOs.

The winners of two copies of Peter Taylor's book The Lazy Project Manager are:

• Marcos Diclei Barros – Toronto, Canada
• Shannon Vettes – Premium Subscriber

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This is just a quick note to let you know that Episode 106 will be a few days late. I am going on a business trip to Paso Robles, CA, so I won't be able to publish the new episode on the 11th. Instead it will be released on the 14th.

But the good news is that because of this we are extending the deadline for the promotional giveaway of  the PM Lectures "Dealing with Difficult People " until Monday 13th. All you have to do to participate is to go to https://www.pducast.com and sign up to the newsletter. Use the sign up for that you see in the left hand navigation. The prize is worth $60 and 2 PDUs. And just for participating in the contest you will receive a 10% discount coupon.

Oh and we also have a new sponsor, so I want to say thank you to Boeing for supporting us!

Until next time!
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP

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Having a solid project management methodology that everyone in your organization follows is one of the most basic building blocks that any company needs. Jason Westland (www.mpmm.com) is joining us on the program today to discuss how to first select and then implement a project management methodology that fits your company needs and also your corporate culture. Jason will introduce you to a simple 5-step process that will guide your project management methodology implementation from start to finish. And because Jason has such a vast project management experience we also wanted to know from him why it is, that so many methodology implementations fail and give us his recommendations on what can be done about it.

We also announce the lucky listener who wins 1 professional edition of Insight Tree.

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Have you ever wondered what the differences are between some of the major PM methodologies? If yes, then this episode will definitely be of interest to you. Jason Westland and I take a closer look at the following 10 PM methodologies:

• MPMM
• Scrum
• RUP
• AUP
• EUP
• UPMM
• Tenstep
• PMCOP
• SSADM
• IEM

You'll get to hear their strengths, what they are used for and we'll throw some "PM methodology history" into the mix as well.

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[Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link]

Have you ever had a project that was 7 months late? Today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast is such a project. In January of this year, our show host Cornelius Fichtner was on a cruise in the Mexican Riviera. During this cruise he recorded a number of Podcast episodes that were supposed to be published in February. But for some reason, today’s episode was forgotten and is now finally being published. In this episode, we focus on improving your project team performance by focusing on the project team members themselves. We have a number of helpful resources (click on the link below) that discuss how you can focus on your team members and we look at a specific example in which Cornelius helped one Podcast listener to support one of his team members and thereby keep a project on track. We are also giving away 2 licenses of the MPMM Project Management Methodology . Listen in to hear how to participate.

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There are many ways for you to learn about project management. The best one is certainly through your own personal experience of managing a project. However, another very effective way to learn about what not to do is by hearing accounts of projects that have gone wrong. Hearing about the problems that occurred without having to suffer through them yourself will enable you to see similar issues on your project and then try and steer clear. In today's episode you are going to hear an account of such a project. Our show host Cornelius Fichtner has been mentoring a junior PM over the past 18 months on an important project that has gone from one problem to the next. Listen in to his recounting the story of the project and giving you tips on how to improve your weekly team conference calls and to use your status reports to make management face the facts of a project in trouble.

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Every project manager has a boss whom he or she reports to. At the end of the year this boss will be responsible for our performance review and decides whether or not we get an increase in salary. But during the year, most of us are wrapped up in our projects.

We have deadlines and budgets to meet, customers and other stakeholders to satisfy, risks to manage and then there are always these pesky project team members that are acting up. So what do our bosses do during all this time? Do they just sit back, sip coffee and enjoy the fruit of our labor when we successfully deliver the project end result?

Wayne Turmel from the Cranky Middle Manager Show doesn’t think so. He sees the role of our boss more along the lines of… but why don’t you listen in and hear him tell it in his own voice?

We also announce the winners of our MPMM giveaway, where two lucky listeners receive a copy of this project management methodology. And we speak to Josh Nankivel about his new Gizmo that give a personal blog to any PM Student.

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Today’s overtime is an interview of our show host Cornelius Fichtner by Wayne Turmel from the Cranky Middle Manager Show.

Last week, Cornelius interviewed Wayne on the role of our bosses in Project Management. And today you get to hear Wayne interviewing Cornelius about how projects fit into into an organization and how important project management can be for organizations. Cornelius makes the case, that every single project in a company is very important.

He starts out by looking at a tiny project that is going on somewhere in a department, how this project relates to the overall economy of the country and then we bring it back to the performing organization and how each project should be embedded in this company’s strategy.

Lastly, we also take a look at how an ideal structure of management by objectives will help accidental project managers understand why they are doing a particular project and how it ties back into the company goals.

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Did you by any chance participate in a teleconference this week? And if so, how was it? Did people participate? Were they on time? Was there an agenda and follow up? Could you hear and understand everyone clearly? And did the teleconference begin and end on time?

If your teleconferences are in any way like the ones that we participated in on past projects, then you probably answered “no” to a number of these questions. But it doesn’t have to be this way, says Gene Dutz, business systems analyst and project management consultant. In this interview we discuss a number of soft and hard tools that will improve the overall quality of teleconferences on your projects. In most cases, these are easy to implement and come at little to no cost.

But we also have a very exciting announcement: We are launching Project Management Lectures, where we offer online project management training by the worlds brightest minds in project management today. To celebrate, we are giving away 2 copies of the first lecture called Dealing with Difficult People by Margaret Meloni, MBA, PMP. To participate, simply go to www.pducast.com and sign up to receive our newsletter. We will draw a winner on October 11th and everyone who signs up after the publication of today's episode gets a chance to win. This prize is worth $60 and 2 PDUs. Good luck!