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Has your project ever been audited? Was it a good experience or would you much rather spend 2 hours at the dentist instead? We met up with Elizabeth Harrin, author of Project Management in the Real World , at the PMI® Global Congress in Denver last month and we discussed not project audits, but its cousin Peer Reviews.

We define what a peer review is and how it compares to a formal project audit. We shine a light onto the fact that peer reviews will help you as a PM to keep honest. In particular during the more hectic times of a project, when it’s easy to say that “I just don’t have the time to have the risk management meeting this week”.

And of course, we look at how you should prepare for a peer review both from the perspective of someone who is giving and someone who is receiving such a review.

We also introduce you to a new Gizmo: It’s a new website called PM Opinions where you can read and write reviews on project management products and services.

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If someone asks you explain what you do as a project manager, do you sometimes struggle to explain it? It’s easy to explain the hard tasks like building houses, changing processes or developing software, but once I get to the less tangible items like project team motivation or relationship management I usually begin to lose the listener. It gets even worse if you have to explain the value of project management to your senior management. It is very difficult to find solid facts that we can use to show that there really is value in our work.

This problem has puzzled our profession for a long time. That is why the PMI has funded a study on the value of project management and it’s results have been released.

We can finally and with scientific certainty say that there is indeed value in what we do.

Our guest today is Mark E. Mullaly, PMP, President & Chief Organizational Therapist of Interthink Consulting Incorporated. He is the co-lead investigator on this study and you can look forward to hearing a great interview.

And don't forget to stop by at PM Opinions to write a short review for The PM Podcast. Even just one sentence will help!

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

Everywhere you turn these days project management experts are talking about the need for us all to move from project management to project leadership. Here at The PM Podcast we have tackled this subject a number of times on previous leadership podcasts in the past and today we will continue this journey by taking a look at The Advantage of Leadership.

The Advantage of Leadership is the name of a book that contains words of wisdom from various leadership experts. It was born of the belief that you can never have too much information. It brings together the knowledge and wisdom of individual leaders from across the field, offering a most comprehensive resource for the reader. It contains 11 chapters, each written by a different expert. It covers a broad spectrum of topics like leading with motivation, leading a team, servant leadership or learned leadership.

To discuss a number of concepts from the book we welcome leadership development expert Stan Levanduski, PMP. He is the driving force behind The Advantage of Leadership and helped bring it all together. Stan is also one of our lecturers on PM Lectures, where he teaches us how to respond to Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects.

As always when we discuss a book on the program we are giving away 2 copies of the book. Please listen to the episode to learn how to participate.

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One major factor that is making a larger project more difficult to manage than a smaller project is complexity. On a larger project you will have a larger product scope, a more extensive budget, a more intricate project schedule and not least of it all also a lot more people. All of these add to your project’s complexity.

Stan Levanduski, PMP argues that the linear way of managing a small project does not scale up to a large project. Large projects have exponentially more complexity and therefore require a different, non-linear approach. He and I did a 4.5 hour long PM lecture on this topic and this interview gives you a glimpse into the complexity of complexity.

This discussion is based on Stan's PM Lecture Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. We are giving away 2 copies of this 4.5 hour long, in-depth project leadership training to our listeners. So listen in and participate.

Stan is also the co-author of a book called The Advantage of Leaderhip.

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"Why on earth did you decide to write about failing on a project?" is the first question that we ask Leadership Expert Stan Levanduski in this interview on his essay "The Fine Art Of Failing... And Living To Tell About It". The essay is part of the book The Advantage of Leadership, which Stan co-authored.

Once we have this important question out of the way (and Stan's answer may surprise you), we discuss why we fail on our projects, how we normally react to such failures, why we need someone to blame, how to be proactive and most importantly how to recover from such a failure both professionally and personally.

We also continue to give away two copies of Stan's PM Lecture Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. This is a 4.5 hour long, in-depth project leadership training for our subscribers. Listen in to learn how to participate.

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In this episode we welcome Terry Doerscher, who is Planview's Chief Process Architect and we discuss the PMO 2.0 Survey Report that was released earlier this year. The survey was sent out in September of 2008 and it contains 455 responses from a diverse group of companies. It was a rather large survey that required a lot of patience from the respondents.

Questions in the survey focused on PMO performance, operational challenges, organizational challenges, and the organization's future plans. The most surprising result that Terry found was that the PMO had increased the scope of the service within the companies. It is no longer just a Project Management Office, but that they are now reaching out to broader involvement of resource and operations management throughout the complete organization.

In our last episode we announced the giveaway of 2 PM Lectures Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. And the winners are: Joseph Horowitz (Premium Podcast Subscriber) and Mohammed Amin (Free Podcast Listener). Congratulations!

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In our last episode we heard Terry Doerscher discuss the results of the Planview PMO 2.0 Survey Report.

So I decided this week to follow up with Terry. We discuss what PMO 2.0 means to him, where PMOs bring the biggest benefit to a company, whether they should be centralized or decentralized and we discuss the 8 functions which he says are the primary functions that a PMO should support: gathering Information, managing demand, perform analysis, coordinate collaborations, identify issues, manage capacity, provide processes & tools and deliver internal consulting.

Oh… and we also discuss PMO 1.0 and PMO 3.0

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Many aspects of culture are invisible, yet culture has an enormous impact on our projects. If ignored, these aspects can lead to misunderstanding, stress and conflict. Alternatively, if attention is given to the invisible aspects, it can enhance productivity, improve project teamwork and create more joy on the job.

Dealing with cross cultural issues on a multi-national projects can be like trying to control an invisible elephant. The issues are real and crucial as we journey into the new era of increasing globalization.

That is why I am very happy to welcome Tom Verghese (www.culturalsynergies.com) on The Project Management Podcast. Tom is the author of the book The Invisible Elephant - Exploring Cultural Awareness. We are going to discuss, what culture is, how cultural awareness and cultural intelligence will help you to better deal with your project teams, and Tom will give you some very specific tips on how to increase cultural synergies on your projects.

In this episode we are giving away 2 copies of his book, 1 copy of his CD "Raising your cultural IQ" as well as 2 copies of his CD/DVD "Sourcing Across Cultures". Listen in to learn how to participate.

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In our last episode we met Tom Verghese (www.culturalsynergies.com) and we discussed Cultural Awareness as well as his book The Invisible Elephant - Exploring Cultural Awareness. We continue this discussion today with a look at the back of Tom’s book where we find The Cultural Mirror. An absolutely fabulous tool to visually display cultural differences between people and cultural groups.

We talk about how to use it on your project, how to interpret it’s results and translate them onto your project, and the importance of understanding your corporate culture for your project.

We continue to give away 2 copies of his book, 1 copy of his CD "Raising your cultural IQ" as well as 2 copies of his CD/DVD "Sourcing Across Cultures". Listen to last week's episode to learn how to participate.

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Have you ever seen Microsoft SharePoint? And after you saw it, did you feel like this was a tool that you’d like to use in order to manage your projects? If the answer is no then you are like most companies who don’t understand MS SharePoint’s power and use it simply to share documents or spreadsheets. That is where the book “SharePoint for Project Management” comes into play. It demonstrates how SharePoint can also help you organize and manage complex projects.

In today’s episode we welcome Dux Raymond Sy, who is the author of SharePoint for Project Management. It turned out that in the interview we talked less about the book and more about the fact that the most important factor of solid project management are the processes that need to be in place first and that the book & SharePoint are just tools to help you eliminate waste.

We also talk to Jennifer Girdish who is the content editor of our Gizmo: PM Boulevard [Update: the template website is no longer available, so we removed the link] .

We are giving away two copies of Dux's book SharePoint for Project Management - listen in to hear how to participate.

And the winners of our last promotional giveaway are:

• Tom Verghese's Book The Invisible Elephant: Fernando Lenga from Buenos Aires, Argentina and Robert Bessette (Premium Subscriber)
• Tom Verghese's CD Raising Your Cultural IQ: Otba Alsboul, from Ryad in the UAE
• Tom Verghese's recording Sourcing Across Cultures: CD: Sayyed Saheer, Tumba Sweden & DVD Amane Nakayama (Premium Subscriber)

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Companies and project managers have believed for years that their only responsibility was mainly a financial one – maximizing value for shareholders and finish your projects on time and on budget. Sustainability is a new idea, where the corporate sector incorporates social and environmental concerns in its strategies and plays a more responsible role in the world.

But why should project managers care about it?

Our guest today is Jennifer Russell, PMP (www.mastodonconsulting.com) who argues that with some effort and foresight, sustainability can be integrated seamlessly in the goals of almost all projects and organizations. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the chief executives who must always initiate and implement sustainability. Project managers have the ability to introduce sustainability in their work and promote social good within the firm. If properly understood and executed, sustainability is a win–win strategy that benefits the project, the company, as well as society.

In our Gizmo's section we talk to Kay Wais who is the creator of the Project Risk Board Game, a fun way to get your mind in shape for project risk management. We are giving away to copies of the game - listen in to hear how to participate.

And the winners of two copies of Dux Raymond Sy's book SharePoint for Project Management are:

• Glenn Rogers, Ontario, Canada (Premium Listener)
• Eliseo Pita, A Coruna, Spain (Free Listener)

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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.