This Interview with Brian Irwin was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
While organizations might find it easier to first address the processes and tools they will use when they’re delivering agile projects, it is individuals and their interactions that ultimately determine the level of enduring agile success an organization is able to realize. The change required to enable long-term agility is cultural in nature. For change to occur, the beliefs and values held by individuals in the organization must be examined.
Organizational change cannot be mandated through top-down edicts and policy. An environment that fosters both individual and organizational transformation must be created. One way to help individuals through a change of this magnitude is through the use of deep questioning which is born out of genuine curiosity.
In his presentation at the congress (and also in our interview) Brian Irwin outlines a method of critical thinking through the use of Socratic questioning to enable individual, guided discovery and provides an example of its use.
Another year has gone by and so it is once again time for our annual “bloopers” episode.
Yes, this is the episode when we take you behind the scenes and have some fun. And so, here are about a dozen or so recording snippets that we have withheld from you, because things just went awfully wrong in the studio and we had to edit them out.
This Interview with Jim DePiante was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
If securities dealers sold securities the way we project managers sell our projects, the authorities would throw those securities dealers in jail.
A project has all the characteristics of any investment. There is the asset itself, the price, the return and the risk associated with the return. How is it then that project managers routinely “sell” investments without knowing the price, nor what the asset or its return will be, all with a straight face and without going to jail!?
Projects must be understood as investments. It’s not enough to say that a project is like an investment. A project is an investment, strictly speaking. In this interview, we review the four characteristics of an investment/project.
This Interview with David Hillson was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
When most people talk about risk management, they are thinking only about uncertain future events that would have a negative effect on achievement of project time and cost objectives. However the definition of risk in the risk chapter of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge includes much more than mere threats to the project schedule or budget, and other risk standards agree. If we limit our view of risk to look at only one part of the risk picture, we will not be proactively managing all the risks that might affect the success of our project, and we will end up taking risks without knowing it.
In this interview with David Hillso we explore the other types of risk that are usually missed from the typical risk process. Drawing on leading thinking and current best practice, we explore the full range of project risks that need to be managed, starting from the proto-definition of risk as “uncertainty that matters”.
Risks that matter include those with positive effects as well as those with negative effects (opportunities as well as threats). They can also affect any project objective, not just time or cost.
In addition, uncertainty in projects arises from much more than future uncertain events (“stochastic risks”). Other sources of uncertainty include variability (“aleatoric risk”), ambiguity (“epistemic risk”), and emergence (“ontological risk”).
With illustrative examples of each type of risk, and an in-depth look at risk responses in project management, this interview helps us to identify all types of risk that might affect our projects, and offers ways for us to tackle them effectively.
Episode 300! Who would have thought back in 2005 when I bought myself a cheap Logitech desk microphone to record the first episode that this little hobby of mine would take all of us to this point here. I certainly had no such expectations.
And for this 300th episode I decided to turn the tables. This is our very first “Ask Me Anything” episode. So I reached out to ten project managers who were guests previously here on the show, and I asked them to send me their question. The question could either be personal or project management related.
And because I contacted ten project managers and asked each of them to send me one question I did of course end up with 15 questions. Talk about scope creep!
What is it that makes you unique and draws people to you and the podcast?
Kevin Reilly
What do you consider to be the most important emerging trend that will have the biggest impact on the evolution of project management in the next 5 years.
This Interview with Joseph Flahiff was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
No other single factor has as much predictive power of the success or failure of your projects and programs than the health of your teams. Today more and more work is being performed by teams, both in operations and in new service/product development. But what exactly is a team? What distinguishes great teams? Is it possible to create great teams, or do they just happen when you are lucky?
This interview will explore these concepts and help you with specific suggestions to transform your team into a team that rocks. You will learn that teams that rock have three things in common: a sense of safety, mutual accountability for goals, and they are necessarily interdependent. Teams are the engine that gets most work done in business today, and great teams can make your entire organization grow.
By the end of the discussion you will see, that you too can create a team that rocks if you will focus your efforts on creating a context where teams that rock can flourish. In particular we discuss creating a team culture that encourages collaboration not just cooperation, cultivating a sense of safety, encouraging team members to know each other, and by creating a more distributed decision making model subtly.
While shifting the culture of a team is not easy, it is imperative to do if you want to create a team that rocks.
This Interview with Elizabeth Larson was recorded at the PMI® Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Many of us know that poor requirements management is a major source of failed projects. But who has time to manage requirements? Elizabeth's presentation "Still No Time to Manage Requirements - My Project Is Later Than Ever" and our interview answers frequently asked questions about requirements management.
Why should we manage requirements?
What is the definition of requirements management?
Do we really need a requirements management plan?
How does business analysis play into requirements management?
Is business analysis just a synonym for requirements management?
Elizabeth also dispels common misconceptions and provides tips for managing requirements when you don’t have the time. She gives us three time saving techniques for requirements elicitation and management.
This Interview with Frank Schettini was recorded at the PMI® Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Frank Schettini is Vice President of Information Technology for the Project Management Institute (PMI). But our interview has nothing to do with IT whatsoever. Instead, we focus on PMI's suite of professional certifications and their value to project managers in their careers.
We begin by discussing the 30th anniversary of the Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential and if the PMI® Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® will ever overtake the PMP certificate. Then we switch gears and look at the talent triangle (which encompasses your technical skills, leadership and business acumen) and how the trend for "fast, online PDUs" is a bit counter to the central concept of the triangle. We close our discussion by taking a detailed look at both the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP)® and the PMI® Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)®.
This Interview with Jack Ferraro was recorded at the PMI® Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Project leaders are needed to lead and sustain strategic efforts by creating experiences that initiate the transformation of people - starting with themselves - then systems and, ultimately, the organization. The qualities that make the strategic project leader unique are efficiency, customization, foresight, and connectedness.
In our interview Jack Ferraro explains the five competencies that a project leader needs to lead strategic initiatives. These competencies enable building and managing relationships in the organization; using techniques to properly advise executives, sponsors, and stakeholders to increase to executive work efficiency; and driving good decision making that achieves goals that enable organizational strategy. We also discuss the fact that the role of the "traditional" project manager does not exist in many Agile frameworks/methodologies, and how becoming a strategic project leader is an alternative career option for us all.
The strategic project leader requires courage, commitment, and alignment of convictions and purpose to succeed and to fill the talent gap. The interview takes you through the self-directed leadership steps to achieve this alignment and take your first action to begin transforming yourself into strategic project leaders.
This Interview with Michael DePrisco was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Generally speaking, the Project Management Institute (PMI) focuses it's work on three markets: Practitioners, Organizations and Academic. Michael DePrisco is Vice President Academic and Educational Programs for PMI and so our discussion centers around the Academic Market.
In the course of this discussion we touch upon The PMI Education Foundation (http://pmief.org/), PMI's large academic research programs, the Global Accreditation Center, and PMI's involvement in academic outreach. Michael closes the interview by reviewing a number of the benefits that PMI creates through all of these programs.
My personal big takeaway from this discussion was that even though "Academic" doesn't sound like the "sexiest" of PMI's three markets it is the one that's at the cutting edge of project management. Through research programs, global accreditation and outreach PMI creates value for all practitioners in the world.
This Interview with Dave Cornelius was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The project manager is a highly skilled knowledge worker who has received rigorous training and knowledge in the process of achieving a globally recognized certification. At the same time, in the lean and agile world, the project manager does not have an official role. The project manager’s role is distributed between the agile team members. You might be wondering whether scrum project management is even a role you can take.
However, the knowledge and skills obtained through certification (including very valuable scrum agile project management training) is transferable in the lean and agile organization. In a competitive business climate, all available brainpower must be present on deck to enable the organization to achieve enterprise agility and scale to meet customer, compliance, financial markets, internal opportunities, and competitive demands. That often means adopting agile project management practices to capitalize on the skills in the team, and investing in project manager coaching and mentoring to make sure everyone has the skills they need to do the job.
Dave Cornelius' paper, presentation and our interview evaluate the project manager role using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) practice and centers on PM participation in the lean and agile transformation as a strategic, leading, or lagging PM. Agile project management with scrum is a growing reality for many project managers, so the practical tips you will learn in this episode will help you adopt and adapt your processes to ensure they fit effectively with your working methods. This is a broad topic that is constantly evolving. Social media for project managers is a good way to stay up to date with the latest thinking on agile, so why not follow our social media channels and stay in touch?
This Interview with Kristy Tan Neckowicz and Dev Ramcharan was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
In their presentation, Kristy Tan Neckowicz (http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristytanpmp) and Dev Ramcharan reviewed harnessing leadership skills necessary to advance your PM career and shine in your role, how to hone your interpersonal and communications skills to manage teams and stakeholders and discussed ways to realize the critical importance of coaching and mentoring in your career, to demonstrate value to your organization.
And in our interview we open the presentation slides and review the following parts: Why you should care about interpersonal skills, behavior styles and motivators, emotional intelligence, the emotional wake, organizational culture and politics, and we close with the all important look at conflict management and coaching.
This Interview with Dave Cornelius was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
5 Saturdays (http://www.5saturdays.org) is a program created to support non-profits and other organizations with outreach initiatives into the local community. It teaches life-skills to high school students using project management approaches from the Agile movement.
The program emerged from curriculum created by Dr. Dave Cornelius while partnering with Holman Community Development Corporation in Los Angeles to introduce technology as a profession to urban high school students.
The program achieved success, as students were able to explore career-focused areas such as information technology (IT) and grasp life skills that included: creative and critical thinking, effective communications, Agility using Scrum and Kanban, and root cause analysis using "5 Whys".
In the interview we focus a lot on the "Mental Shifts" section from the book. You will learn about Command & Control, Competitive Advantages, Optimized Systems and also Why Agility is important.
This Interview with Frank Saladis, PMP, PMI Fellow, was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.
In his congress paper, Frank describes Positive Leadership in Project Management as follows:
Despite the effort placed on planning, coordinating, and integrating the many components of a project, the project manager’s typical day is filled with challenge, Each day includes an unending stream of email, deadline issues, some frustrating events (and people), conflicting view points from stakeholders, and demands for changes at very inopportune times. We can also find within a typical day in the life of a project, some successes and victories (and maybe an occasional thank-you or other form of recognition. At the end of the day it is sometimes difficult to remember what actually happened and what was accomplished. The activities and accomplishments of the day are often blurred by the thoughts associated with the preparations and steps that must be taken to prepare for and begin another set of adventures just waiting for their chance to occur at the start of the next morning.
Dealing with this intense mode of operation on a regular basis places a very heavy demand on the abilities of a project manager and there is a real need to find some way to balance the competing elements that go along with the job. This balance extends to one’s personal and family life also. The question then becomes “How can we (as project managers) find that balance?” In the book, First Things First by Roger A. Merrill and Stephen Covey, a suggestion is offered: “Know the direction in which you intend to go and your goals on a personal and professional level.” In other words, a clear sense of direction should be defined for your personal life as well as your chosen profession. To a practicing project manager, that advice should sound very familiar. In fact, it is essential for project success, and something many of our guests on our leadership podcasts have spoken about. Without direction and a set of objectives, how will we ever know where we are going? How can we lead a team if we don’t have goals to guide ourselves and our team? There is no question that goals and purpose must be defined upfront, refined, and then communicated with high level of energy and enthusiasm. Without this clarity and sense of purpose, we cannot effectively lead our team, our organization, or our own lives. This is where positive leadership becomes a critical factor.
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, CSM, is the host and the author at The Project Management Podcast. He has welcomed hundreds of guests and project management experts to the podcast and has helped over 60,0000 students prepare for their PMP® Exam. He has authored dozens of articles on projectmanagement.com and PM World 360. He speaks at conferences around the world about project management, agile methodology, PMOs, and Project Business. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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