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If you work in a small company then it is quite likely that your project portfolio application is just a list of current projects in Word, Excel or even handwritten on a napkin. But once you outgrow this stage you are going to be faced with a myriad of project portfolio tools with an even more confusing array of features that you may or may not need.

My guest today, Curt Finch, is going to make this a lot easier for you because together we are going to look at the 6 top criteria to consider when shopping around for a project portfolio application. We'll be starting out with a more general look at what PPM solutions are and we'll end with looking at which of these criteria companies usually have most problems with during the actual implementation of the software.

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Let's do the following exercise together: Today or tomorrow when you get to your office I want you to take a look at your organizations portfolio of projects. Obviously, the more project management maturity your company has, the more detailed this will be. However, what you will see in most companies is that the portfolio usually only contains the large, important or strategic projects. But what about the smaller ones? You know... those 30 projects which individually don't look like much but when you look at them as a whole they become a sizable chunk.

Often they are missing in the portfolio. So because they are "not important", would take too much time to keep track of, have too small a budget or a million other reasons they are not on anyone's radar. But small projects, while often overlooked, are still crucial to a company's success and will cost you a lot of money if managed improperly.

This is the premise of our discussion today with Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx (http://www.journyx.com). We discuss how he defines a small project, why we tend to ignore the small ones,  how he recommends that we manage all of these small projects, we look at the 3 key best practices that we must implement on a small project to be successful and what you can do today to improve overall management of small projects in your area of influence.

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This episode is sponsored by http://www.pdu-insider.com:

This is a Premium Episode that is available to everyone. Normally, our Premium episodes are only available to our paying premium subscribers. A paid subscription gets you

- Access to all episodes starting from #1
- A new episode usually once per week
- PDF transcript (starting with episode 136)
- Automatic participation in all promotions

Every now and then, we release a premium episode for everybody, so that free listeners can hear what they are missing from the premium version. This is one of them.

In this interview we meet once again with Brian Weiss (PMI's Vice President Product Management) and Mark Emery (he is the business owner of the new CCRS). The reason why we meet them again is a simple one: Have you ever wondered how PMI manages their internal projects? I mean we all heard the old saying that "The cobbler's children have no shoes". This saying refers to the fact that a busy cobbler will be so busy making shoes for his customers that he has no time to make some for his own children.

So the question is then... does PMI get so busy defining and publishing standards in project management that they forget to apply these standards on their own projects?

Let's find out in our interview.

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This episode is sponsored by http://www.pdu-insider.com:

Do you hold a PMI® Certificate like the PMP®, PgMP®, PMI-RM® or PMI-SP®? If you do, then you know all about PDUs (Professional Development Units). In a nutshell, PMI's Continuing Certification Requirements System (CCRS) says that your certificate is only valid for 3 years and then you will have to apply for recertification. But that doesn't mean that you have to take your test again. It means that you have to earn and then claim a predefined number of PDUs, pay a fee, and voila... your certification is good for another 3 years.

A little while back, PMI gave their CCRS system a major facelift. In our interview you will meet Brian Weiss (PMI's Vice President Product Management) and Mark Emery (he is the business owner of the CCRS). Both have been involved in the project from the start. In our interview we look at why PMI decided to upgrade the system, who has to use it, some of it's features and we also discover our guest's favorite ways to earn PDUs.

Brian Weiss, Vice President Product Management, serves on PMI’s Executive Management Team. In his role, he provides overall leadership, planning and oversight of PMI’s worldwide products for organizations and project management practitioners. Certifications, implementation of new and updated standards, career framework, Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) products and services, SeminarsWorld® training courses and PMI’s Global Congress programs are critical offerings within his area of responsibility..

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Insider - Free PDUs Info For Everyone:

In the 2009 PM Podcast Listener Survey you (the listeners) told me that you would also like to hear book reviews. So we teamed up with The PMI Los Angeles Chapter's Book Club and we bring you today the reviews for 2 books:

1. “Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business” by Patrick Lencioni - reviewed by Joel Fleiss
2. "Why should Anyone Be Led By You?” by Rob Goffe and Gareth Jones - Reviewed by Hiba Hamdan

And here are the winners of our latest book giveaway. We have 2 copies of Terry Doerscher's Taming Change with Portfolio Management. As always, one copy goes to our premium listeners and one goes to our free listeners. And the winners are

• Premium Listener: Don Brown, Mesa, AZ
• Free listener: Benoit Ben

Congrats to both of you.

Click to download the XLSX file...

Download The PM Podcast PDU Logfile (XLSX) and track each episode you listen to. The better you document your learning activities the more you can give evidence to PMI that you have indeed subscribed and listened to The PM Podcast during an audit. Please click here for everything you need to know about earning Free PDUs from The PM Podcast...

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This video explains how to earn 60 Free PDUs from The PM Podcast. All you have to do is subscribe, listen and claim!

This video is an update of the information previously published in episodes 150 and 183. The videos of those episodes have been removed.

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode of The PM Podcast is titled “Earn 60 Free PDUs” because we want to show you how to do exactly that simply by listening to The PM Podcast. Here's how in a nutshell:

• It’s very simple to earn these 30 free PMP PDUs (and they are also relevant PDUs for other credentials too)
• Just keep doing what you are doing right now:
• Listen to (or watch) The PM Podcast regularly
• Claim 30 Category C PDUs from PMI.

Many of you may already be aware of this and also how it is done, but in the last couple of months I have received a large number of emails from listeners out there asking me about how exactly to claim these Category C PDUs that I have decided to make this into a podcast. Project Management Professional credential holders need to earn 60 PDUs for PMP® renewal, so claiming these Category C PDUs will give you a headstart to completing your PDU requirements.

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This video explains how to earn 60 Free PDUs from The PM Podcast. All you have to do is subscribe, listen and claim!

This video is an update of the information previously published in episodes 150 and 183. The videos of those episodes have been removed.

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode of The PM Podcast is titled “Earn 60 Free PDUs” because we want to show you how to do exactly that simply by listening to The PM Podcast. Here's how in a nutshell:

• It’s very simple to earn these free PDUs.
• Just keep doing what you are doing right now:
• Listen to (or watch) The PM Podcast regularly
• Claim your PDUs from PMI.

Many of you may already be aware of this and also how it is done, but we keep getting emails from people asking about this and starting March 1, 2011 PMI has increased the number of PDUS that you can earn in this way from 15 to 30. That is why I created this video.

Note: This video is in essence an update to the old video in episode 150, explaining how this all works under PMI's new PDU category structure. To avoid confusion, we have removed the video of episode 150 and replaced it with this one.

Ultimately, Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential holders need to earn 60 PDUs for PMP renewal cycles. You can earn half of those for free using The PM Podcast resources, and the video above explains exactly how.

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We are extending the promotional giveaway of Terry's book "Taming Change with Portfolio Management": To win a copy of Terry's book: Go to our Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/pmpodcast find the announcement of this book giveaway and simply add a quick comment (Deadline is July 21 2010).

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:

Last week we spoke with Terry Doerscher from Planview and he gave us an introduction to project portfolio management. This week we are going to where the rubber meets the road. We want to learn in what steps exactly PPM can be introduced in an organization. We'll look at this from various angles and we'll specifically discuss the following types of assessments that Terry recommends that you perform in your organization before you even get started

• A general operational assessment
• An organizational assessment
• A functional assessment
• A technological assessment

The information we talk about was taken from Terry's book "Taming Change with Portfolio Management" and to win a copy of Terry's book: Go to our Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/pmpodcast find the announcement of this book giveaway and simply add a quick comment (Deadline to participate extended to July 21 2010).

 

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The PMBOK®  Guide defines Project Portfolio Management as "The centralized management of one or more portfolios, which includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other related work, to achieve specific strategic business objectives." As always with definitions from the PMBOK®  Guide, they are straightforward, dry, to the point and they give you a good idea what the term is all about. But they are usually also lacking in regards to telling you much about how Project Portfolio Management is performed out in the world.

But that's where The PM Podcast comes into play. We bring you the real life experience and explanations about Project Portfolio Management with one of the big names in Portfolio Management: Terry Doerscher from www.planview.com.

Terry recently published "Taming Change with Portfolio Management", a book that he wrote together with Pat Durbin. I have taken this book release as an opportunity to bring Terry on the show to look into the basics of Project Portfolio Management. You'll hear his definition, the 4 core portfolio management information structures, how portfolio management enhances the value we deliver to our organizations and more.

Win a copy of Terry's book: Go to our Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/pmpodcast find the announcement of this book giveaway and simply add a quick comment (Deadline to participate extended to July 21 2010).

Here are the winners of our PDU Podcast giveaway. The PDU Podcast is our sister podcast which helps PMP® and PgMP® credential holders earn at least 1 PDU every month. All you have to do is to watch the video webinars and you have just earned a PDU. You can find it at www.pducast.com. And the winners are

• Premium Listener: Keith Hopkins from Fullerton right here in California
• Free listener: Ilias Biris from Espoo in Finland

Congrats to both of you

Oh... and just in case you are now completely confused about the difference between The PDU Insider and The PDU Podcast... The PDU Insider is a newsletter in which I give you inside tips about earning PDUs. And The PDU Podcast is a videocast where you can watch webinars and earn PDUs.

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This episode is sponsored by:

Part 3. This episode of The PM Podcast is a 4-part webinar presented by Andreas Heilwagen on the topic of risk management.

The previous two parts have looked at risk management critical success factors and how we can use these to better manage the project, leading (hopefully) to a more successful outcome.

He stipulates that it is a critical success factor for your project success. We look at a definition of Risk Management, present the value that it offers to your projects, go through the processes offered by The PMBOK® Guide, take a look at the free risk management templates [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] offered by Andreas and the look into the success factors that will make your internal risk management approach a winning activity.

Remember, risk management in agile projects draws on the same principles and processes. As with all project management processes, you can tailor them to best fit your environment.

Click to download the video:
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This episode is sponsored by:

Part 1. This episode of The PM Podcast is a 4-part webinar presented by Andreas Heilwagen on the topic of risk management. He stipulates that it is a critical success factor for your project success. We look at a definition of Risk Management, present the value that it offers to your projects, go through the processes offered by The PMBOK® Guide, take a look at the free risk management templates [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] offered by Andreas and the look into the success factors that will make your internal risk management approach a winning activity.

Whether you are working in a predictive environment, a hybrid project delivery environment, or considering risk management in agile projects, you'll find tips and tricks to learn from and implement in this webinar.

Click to download the video:
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This episode is sponsored by:

Part 2. This episode of The PM Podcast is a 4-part webinar presented by Andreas Heilwagen on the topic of Risk Management. In Part 1 we looked at risk management critical success factors and we're continuing that topic today.

He stipulates that it is a critical success factor for your project success. We look at a definition of risk management, present the value that it offers to your projects, go through the processes offered by The PMBOK® Guide, take a look at the free risk management templates [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] offered by Andreas and the look into the success factors that will make your internal risk management approach a winning activity.

Risk management strategies for agile projects might feel a little different from what is being discussed here, but you'll still be able to apply the principles of risk management to your work, whatever kind of delivery environment you work in.

Click to download the video:
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This episode is sponsored by:

Part 4. This episode of The PM Podcast is a 4-part webinar presented by Andreas Heilwagen on the topic of risk management.

Each part of this webinar is looking at risk management critical success factors. Andreas says that the effective management of project risk is a critical success factor, and I can see why. We look at a definition of Risk Management, present the value that it offers to your projects, go through the processes offered by The PMBOK® Guide, take a look at the free risk management templates [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] offered by Andreas and the look into the success factors that will make your internal risk management approach a winning activity.

Agile project risk management isn't something we go deep into specifically, but risk management is a universal concept. You will be able to take the ideas here and apply them to your agile team environment, if you are using agile methods.