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I am once again joined by Jack Ferraro, author of the book “Project Management for Non-Project Managers”  - When I originally opened the book my attention was drawn to a section of the book called “Functional Managers’ Impact on Causes of Project Failure”. In this section Jack describes about 20 areas of functional management responsibility that - if addressed properly by the functional manager - will go a long way in avoiding that a project fails.

But as we have learned in the last interview, functional managers may not actually be aware of project management fundamentals, let alone that some of their areas of responsibility will in fact help us to deliver a successful project. So my primary thought was... how do I as a PM approach my functional manager and tell him or her that I need their assistance in areas such as business politics or lack of organizational support?

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The projects that you and I manage are crucial to implement change within our organizations. To succeed, we routinely depend on the functional managers - the person who runs the department or division, who resolves day-to-day operational issues, and who is responsible for ensuring that the project team has the resources it needs and keeps its goals aligned with the company’s overall strategy and vision.

Unfortunately, there are only few functional managers who speak our language or even have firm grasp on the most fundamental of project processes. Too often, this knowledge gap leads to poor communications, conflict, schedule delays, cost overruns and lost business opportunity.

And who gets the blame? Yup... we do.

To help bridge this gap we are interviewing Jack Ferraro, PMP (www.myprojectadvisor.com[Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]) who wrote the book “Project Management for Non-Project Managers”. We discuss the many ways in which functional managers can get involved in project success and we also discuss the four key project management skills that any functional manager needs:

• Articulating the real customer need and business case
• Staying focused on project deliverables
• Understanding your key dependencies
• Being proactive about project risk.

Click to download the video:

There is one question that I get regularly asked from podcast listeners, and that is “Can you recommend any good project management templates?” Of course I can.

Over the years the following two collection of PM Templates have become my favorite:
PM Templates from Method123 at www.method123.com
PM Templates from The Template Collective at templatecollective.com/

In this video I show you what they have to offer and we open up a couple of examples from both products.

Whether you are creating a project plan and need a template to get you started, or looking for a template for project reporting, or anything in between, they are sure to have something to help.

Please note that The PM Podcast is a compensated affiliate of both Method123 and The Template Collective. If you click and then buy their templates we will earn a commission, with which I will buy a pizza and that will keep my enthusiasm up to continue producing great podcast episodes for you.

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Today we welcome back Jeff Furman, PMP - the author of The Project Management Answer Book. In this second interview with him we learn how Jeff became a project manager and how he dealt with the fact that the first project ever assigned to him had previously failed and it now fell to him to save the day.

Jeff’s story is simply a great and inspirational tale of (for once) something going right in our profession. It shows how we as PMs can motivate people to do things right, if we can speak to the needs of our customers and then deliver on our promise.

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A while back we introduced The Project Management Answer Book written by Jeff Furman, PMP to you. I met up with Jeff recently and we recorded this interview in which he recounts all the doors that opened up for him simply because of the fact that he wrote down what he knew about project management.

As you can imagine, this interview is a bit different than others here on the podcast. Generally speaking, we usually talk about project management methodologies and how to apply them on your projects. In this interview we want to show you how with a little effort of writing about what you know can propel your career into unexpected and positive directions.

As you will hear, while Jeff authored a book and became published that way it all started simply because he started writing about IT and project management. So even if your goal isn’t to become a published author of a book it’s a good idea to get everything you know about our field written down and blog about it. And Jeff has a few recommendations for you.

To me, this is a really encouraging story showing what a few words a day can do for anyone.

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I came across an article titled The Leadership Attitude [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] written by Elizabeth Harrin. I liked what she had to say. In this article she boiled leadership down to 4 main pillars:

• Openness
• Honesty
• Trust
• Integrity

In our interview today I meet up with her to discuss the article in more detail. We look at the difference between management and leadership, how to be a manager and leader at the same time, and what these 4 pillars mean to her.

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A quick health update from me to all my listeners. After 2 months of physiotherapy I'm finally starting to feel better. I should be as good as new in hopefully about one month.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

When project budgets are dwindling, deadlines passing, and tempers flaring, then the usual response is to browbeat the project team and point fingers of blame - usually toward the project manager. That’s not really all that helpful. For these situations, what is needed is an objective process for accurately assessing what is wrong and a clear plan of action for fixing the problem.

Enter Todd Williams, PMP who wrote the book Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure. Todd and I sat down at the PMI® Global Congress last year and in this interview we discuss approaches to project rescue.

Here’s a brief book overview of Todd’s book: Rescue the Problem Project provides project managers, executives, and customers with the answers they require. Turnaround specialist Todd Williams has worked with dozens of companies in multiple industries resuscitating failing projects. In this new book, he reveals an in-depth, start-to-finish process.

As always when we have an author discussing his book we are giving away two copies and by now you should know how that works. One copy is reserved for our premium listeners and one for everyone else. If you want a chance of winning the book, please go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the book giveaway announcement. All you have to do is leave a comment.

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A quick health update from me to all my listeners. The diagnosis is BPPV and I'm on the road to improvement. However, I'm still not able to publish regular, weekly episodes.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

If you are a PMP® credential holder then you know what the acronym PDU stands for. It stands for Professional Development Units. Every PMP needs to earn 60 of these PDUs every 3 years in order keep his or her certification. The idea behind having to earn these PDUs is a simple one. PMI wants every PMP to continuously learn. Just like doctors or pilots who have to take classes regularly and practice new skills in order to keep their license, PMI wants us PMP® credential holders to learn new project management skills so that we can be the best project managers possible.

The rules describing which activities count towards PDUs and how you have to report and claim them is documented in the “PDU Category Structure and Policies” document. In March 2011 PMI released a new version of these rules that is a lot less complex than the old one. So this has been out for about 10 months now, however, I still receive a lot of emails from confused PMP® credential holders who have questions about it. So I went ahead and sat down with Rory McCorkle from PMI to discuss the new structure and get clear descriptions and explanations directly from the horses mouth.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• Why were the PDU policies changed?
• We’ll define the rule that “One hour of effort is equal to one PDU”
• We’ll discuss the PDU Divisions and Categories
• We give examples of PDU earning activities
• And lot’s more.

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I've been fighting an inner-ear infection since December. I won't be able to publish PM Podcast episodes for the coming 2 weeks until the infection has run its course.

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Seriously... there are no bloopers this year. So don't bother looking for any.

Move along now... no bloopers to see here. Or hear here.

Now really... why are you still here? Go to another episode now.

But if you don't believe me and insist on still pressing the play button above, then please do enjoy yourself. We try hard to record our episodes as flawlessly as we can, but unfortunately we just keep stumbling over our tongues (or draw a complete blank when trying to ask Peter Taylor a question). Have fun.

But as I said... there are NO bloopers here. ;-)

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This is another interview recorded at the PMI North American Congress in Dallas Fort Worth. My guest is Rory McCorkle who is the PMI Product Manager - Credentials (and he will tell you himself at the start of the interview what exactly that means). The reason why I’m talking to him is bring you the latest information about the new PMI-ACP certification - that is to say the PMI  Agile Certified Practitioner Exam.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• When did the PMI-ACP certification get started?
• How was PMI-ACP developed?
• What value does the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner certification have for us as professionals working in agile project management as well as our employers?
• What are the pre-requisites that you have to fulfill before you can take PMI-ACP exam?
• And lot’s more.

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This is the 2nd episode with interviews that I recorded on the road in recent weeks. As a special treat you are going to hear not just one, but four interviews today that were recorded at the PMO Syposium in Dallas, TX. Each interview is obviously going to be about PMOs, but with a twist...

I attended the PMO Symposium to help out Mark Perry. Mark is a good friend of mine, the host of The PMO Podcast and his company BOT International was an exhibitor at the PMO Symposium. He asked me to fly in and help at the BOT booth. There I quickly realized that the other consultants from BOT International who were working at the booth were all exceptional experts in their fields. So I decided to ask each of them 3 questions that connect their field of experience with the topic of PMO.

In this episode you will hear:

• Terry Doerscher with whom we focus on Project Portfolio Management
• Steve Romero whose expertise is IT Governance and how it relates to PMO
• Mel Bost who will tell you what a PMO needs to do in order to improve lessons learned in your organization
• And last but not least Mark Perry with whom I discuss what business driven PMO setup and strategy means.

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At the end of October I attended the PMI® Global Congress in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. Two weeks later I attended the PMO Symposium in Orlando Florida. As always I meet a lot of interesting people at these events, which is a great opportunity for me to sit down with them and bring you their thoughts, concerns, ideas and insights.

So over the coming weeks we are going to delve into 10 interviews that were recorded at these two events and we begin with a discussion I had with two representatives from the PMI Guadalajara Chapter from Mexico.

My guests Felipe Nunez and Edgar Polanco are attending the congress mainly to participate in the PMI Leadership Meeting, which usually precedes the congress. In this meeting leaders and board members from PMI Chapters get together to learn from each others experience of leading a volunteer project management organization.

We discuss their impressions of the Leadership Meeting, the Global Congress and how they will be setting up their own, local congress in Guadalajara in 2012.

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When I started thinking about what to do for episode 200 knew that I definitely didn’t want to do a self-congratulatory, anniversary episode. So I decided instead that I would be lazy, take a step back and ask 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The responses I received are as varied as the people I asked. In total we have over 1 hour of insights, which is why episode 200 consists of 4 parts. Parts 1-3 are all the audio responses and part 4 are the videos.

And now... without further ado here are

• Josh Nankivel - www.pmstudent.com
• Mark Perry - The PMO Podcast
• Margaret Meloni - PM Student
• Tom Mochal - www.tenstep.com
• Max Wideman - www.maxwideman.com
• Jason Westland - www.method123.com

with their number one challenge and solution to project management today.

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In case you haven’t listened to part 1, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Ron Holohan
• Roberto Mori - www.ipma.ch
• Elizabeth Harrin - rebelsguidetopm.com
• Stacy Goff - www.ipma-usa.org
• David Blumhorst - www.daptiv.com

have to say.

By the way... Roberto Mori is the president of IPMA, Stacy Goff is president of ASAPM and you might be wondering if I didn’t reach out to PMI’s president Mark Langley... I did and Mark sent us a video response. To hear what he has to say please watch part 4 with all the videos that we got.

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In case you haven’t listened to part 1 and 2, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Mark Horstman - www.managertools.com
• Jack Ferraro - www.myprojectadvisor.com [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]
• Lindsay Scott -  www.arraspeople.co.uk
• Soma Bhattacharia - www.steppingintopm.com
• Terry Doerscher - www.botinternational.com
• Andy Kaufmann - www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com

have to say.

And when you are done don’t forget to watch part 4 in which you’ll see the four video responses that we received.

Click to download the video:

In case you haven’t listened to part 1, 2 or 3, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

In part 4 we see the video responses of

• Mark Langley - www.pmi.org
• Peter Taylor - www.thelazyprojectmanager.com
• Rich Maltzman -  http://earthpm.com
• Wayne Turmel

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

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

In our first interview with Jamal Moustafaev, PMP (www.thinktankconsulting.ca) we looked at what portfolio management is and what benefits it will bring to a company once they have it implemented. But how do you implement it? Where do you start with portfolio management and what strategic approaches should you apply?

These are lots of good questions and Jamal has lots of good answers coming up.

As always, when we have an author on the program to discuss his or her book, we are giving away two copies. One copy automatically goes to one lucky premium subscriber and the other one is up for grabs. Please stop by at facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the book giveaway notice.