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At the beginning of 2008 we put up a survey and wanted to know from you what you considered to be your Project Management Hot Topics for 2008. Requirements Management received 70 votes and landed in second place. We looked around and are happy to bring to you today an interview with Hans Jonasson (www.jtcunlimited.com). Hans is the author of a fabulous book called Determining Project Requirements and in our interview today we will be looking at how you should be determining your project’s requirements. I promise, you are going to like this one. You will learn not only about the process of properly determining requirements and the tools that are required for it, you will also be able to win a copy of his book.

In this interview Hans Jonasson and I discuss requirements gathering best practices as well as many of the tools of the trade. I would like to know how close your company comes to this ideal state. Please leave a comment below.

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Lean Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology which combines tools from both Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. Lean manufacturing focuses on speed and traditional Six Sigma focuses on quality. By combining the two, the result is better quality faster. I recently had the opportunity to attend a one week seminar on the Lean Six Sigma methodology from my employer. In this episode I will give you an overview of what I took away, we will talk about the acronyms DMAIC, DIRFT and SWIM and I will give you my conclusion of what I feel is important about Lean Six Sigma.

And here are the winners who each won a copy of Brian Irwin's book Managing Politics and Conflict in Projects: Alfredo A. Guillen (Premium Podcast Subscriber) Karthik Surya (Free Podcast Listener).

Are you using Lean Six Sigma in your daily work? How is it working for you? Where are its weaknesses and strengths? Please leave a comment below.

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Today we are starting a new series of episodes. My plan is to go back to the basics of project management and revisit books and teachings from the great names in project management. The reason for this is because I feel that we loose ourselves way too much in the detailed nitty-gritty of our methodologies. Agile, Waterfall, RUP, Scrum and Extreme Project Management are all good methodologies, but in order to be able to apply them properly, you have to first understand the underlying fundamentals of our profession. And there is no better way to do this than by going back to the basics. I have a list of great names in project management in mind. And today, we are starting out with the name that ranks at the very top and that is the world-famous singer, songwriter and project manager Mrs. Britney Spears.

How do you feel about the project management abilities of Mrs. Britney Spears? Do you read her books? Do you apply her best practices on your projects? Please leave a comment below.

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Project Politics are very likely the "ugly stepchild" of project management. We know that we have them, but we try to ignore them as best as we can. Because of that we can be sure that they will bite us. And instead of blaming ourselves for not managing them properly, we blame the elusive "company politics" for the fact that our project just failed. This is where Brian Irwin, PMP can help. He wrote the book Managing Politics and Conflict in Projects, which will help you not only understand the dynamics of politics in a company but will also help you manage it. In our discussion with Brian we focus on one important part of managing your politics, and that is your stakeholders. They say that the only project where you don't have politics is a project where you have only one person participating. But since all of us usually have more than one stakeholder we have to know how to manage their project related expectations properly.

We are giving away two copies of Brian's book. Listen in to learn how to participate in this giveaway.

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In Episode 62 we spoke with Thomas Cutting, PMP about "How to become a Project Manager". In today's interview with Nehme E. Abouzeid we will be looking more at the middle of your career. You are now an established project manager, you have managed a number of projects, you are (hopefully) respected in your company and you are thinking about your future. Where can you go? What is there waiting ahead of you? Nehme makes the case that because you are a project manager, because you meet and have to work with people from various departments and divisions in your company and because you have seen so many different aspects of the company's processes and workflows you are an excellent candidate to become an executive officer in your company.

And here are the names of the winners of our Leap Year Giveaway: They are Patrick O'Neill (from among the subscriber of the Premium Podcast) and Rajeev Kumar Sharma (from among the registered users of our website). Each has won a license of The Project Management PrepCast™, which will help them prepare for the PMP® Exam.

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The business environment is changing quite dramatically and also quite rapidly. We project managers are facing new challenges like globalization, more complex projects or shorter project schedules. Often this is a result of a changing global marketplace, which changes our company, which in turn changes the way we run projects. Stefan Hagen is the managing director of Startup Euregio Management GmbH, a full service provider for project and process management, and he has taken the traditional organizational approaches and theories and combined them with business process management and the processes needed to run enterprise wide projects. The result is the IPPM Organization®. We discuss this model and how it supports projects in large companies.

We also announce the winners of the Mind Manager Pro 7 giveaway and remind you of our Leap Year Contest.

Download Stefan Hagen's PDF presentation on the IPPM Organization®...

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In January of 2008 I went on my first cruise, which took me to the Mexican Riviera. Of course, I never leave home without the podcast recording equipment, so it is no surprise that I took a few moments on the ship to record a couple of short episodes for you. This is the first one and I am introducing you to a book titled Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book is all about productivity and how to get your to-do-list under control. However, this is not meant to be a book review in the traditional sense - in this episode I present to you my journey over the past 3-4 months of how I used and implemented this book in order to get my hundreds of tasks under control.

Buy David Allen's Getting Things Done from Amazon...

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Would you like to know how to define the value of Project Management? We have an answer for you! Five episodes ago we spoke with Mike Graupner, PMP about Monkey Management. We gave Mike another visit and had a conversation about his current projects. We hear about his involvement in IS governance, how he is dealing with SOX compliance, we follow him as he implements a 1 million dollar computer just for testing and he will also tell you how to define the value of Project Management. As always, we also give you several helpful resources that complement our interview.

But there is more: this week we also have not just one, but two contests and you can win four prizes a total value of $800. You can win one of two licenses of Mind Manager Pro 7 and you can also win one of two licenses to The Project Management PrepCast™. But you will have to act fast, so listen in...

Feb 17 2007 update:  We have drawn the winners of the giveaway for Mind Manager Pro 7. They are: Jun Labao from the Philippines and Scott Stamey. Scott is a subscriber to the Premium Podcast and every subscriber automatically got a chance to win, while Jun is a listener to the Free Podcast and was drawn from among those who wrote an email.

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast...

In his book Managing Politics and Conflict in Projects Brian Irwin, PMP introduces us to the DTAB Project Leadership Model. This model is based on four guiding principles. About these Brian says: "I've witnessed leaders who demonstrate those four guiding principles deliver outstanding results in the project environment." In today's Overtime, we bring Brian back on the program to discuss the model, how it should work in theory and how you can apply it in your everyday life as a project manager.

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Nehme E. Abouzeid is the guest in today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast™ and we look at project management in the hotel, casino and hospitality business. Nehme works for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in Las Vegas, Nevada, the town that 15 of the 20 largest hotels in the world call their home. Thus, the projects that Nehme was involved in were major, business critical projects. We hear about a ticketing system that he helped implement for their entertainment center, next is a convention system for the hotel, then we talk about his process improvement projects and we finally explore a retail system project where the complete retail system for a series of stores had to be replaced. In just one night.

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Ron Holohan, PMP. We talk about his role as a Program Manager who has 5 project managers reporting directly to him. He works for a consumer electronics company in a weak matrix organization, which offers challenges of it’s own. We take a look at his company’s processes, how they came to have their current PM methodology and how a project budget is created. We also introduce you to a new Gizmo. This week we look at the 20 Minute IT Manager, a training and mentoring program that works almost like a podcast.

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On the last day of the year we are not going to worry about project management. Instead we are going to have some fun. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for you) not every episode and interview that we record is perfect on the first take. Sometimes my tongue or the tongues of my guests and helpers gets twisted and the strangest things come out. And more often than not, they are rather funny. And here they are: All the bleepers and bloopers that got cut out of our normal episodes as a 5 minute potpourri for you.

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One of the projects that our show host Cornelius Fichtner, PMP is managing is showing signs of trouble. It is a small, offshore software development project and the quality of the code returned is not good. Because it is a small project that is in trouble there are one or two things that you need to do differently in order to rescue it than you would do on a large troubled project. In today’s episode Cornelius talks about the three steps that he took in order to begin turning things around.

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Thomas Cutting, PMP from The Cutting's Edge [Update: The web page is no longer available so we removed the link]. Thomas has been a guest on our program twice before. The topics that we discussed with him then were "Authority" and "How to become a Project Manager?" In this episode we take a peek into his life as a project manager, consultant and speaker on project management. We are also launching a new show segment called Gizmos in which we introduce you to a variety of tools that help make your everyday life as a project manager easier. Our featured Gizmo is a free Microsoft project viewer called Live Project from Kadonk at https://www.kadonk.com.

We have finished our Book Giveaway of one copy every week of Gerard Hill's The Complete PMO Handbook second edition. The winners are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada
Book 2: Arnošt Katolický, Czechoslovakia
Book 3: Özgen Güngör, Berlin, Germany
Book 4: Donald Damore, Cumberland, RI, USA

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Wait... what's that on your back? Could that be a Monkey? In the course of our working days all of us acquire duties, chores and tasks. Some of them are important and they need to be addressed so that we can finish our deliverables. Others must be considered as "Monkeys" - tasks that we got stuck with and now don't seem to be able to get rid of even though we might not be the right person to take care of them. And we all wonder - how did I get stuck with this? Mike Graupner, PMP describes to us today the techniques he uses to address the Monkeys in his life. We talk about Monkey Management in general and we also look at how this translates into managing the Monkeys on your projects.

Click here to download the presentation that we refer to during the interview.

We also continue our book giveaway. Gerard Hill is offering four free copies of his book "The Complete Project Management Office Handbook (Second Edition)" to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast. Listen to the announcements to hear how to participate.

The winners of the books so far are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada
Book 2: Arnošt Katolický, Czechoslovakia
Book 3: Özgen Güngör, Berlin, Germany
Book 4: Drawing will be on Sunday, December 16th

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When you ask 10 Project Management Office (PMO) Managers about the functions that their PMO offers internally then you will very likely receive 10 answers. That is nothing unusual or unexpected because a PMO has to be built to fit the requirements of each company. The PMO does what the company needs it to do. Some PMOs are small, some are large. Some offer limited project support some are all encompassing. But now ask: What is truly the primary function of a PMO? In his book “The Complete Project Management Office Handbook” (Second Edition) Gerard Hill of The Hill Consulting Group proposes that the PMO is really a Business Solution. So in our interview with Gerard we not only discuss the PMO Model from his book which consists of the 5 PMO Capabilities and 20 PMO Functions but we also look at how to set the focus of your PMO, so that it truly becomes a business solution.

Gerard Hill is offering four free copies of his book "The Complete Project Management Office Handbook (Second Edition)" to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast. Listen to the episode to learn how to participate.

The winners of the books so far are:
Book 1: Patrick Richard, Laval, Canada

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Are you currently studying for the PMP Exam? Wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to someone who just recently passed their PMP Exam talk about it? You can! Today’s episode of The Project Management Podcast™ features an Interview with Ron Holohan who just recently passed his exam. In today’s episode we learn how he studied, what he would do differently if he had to do it again, his recommendations for all those among you who are currently studying for the exam and many other golden nuggets of information from and about the PMP Exam. We also have 3 helpful resources to support you in your PMP Studies.

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Today we feature a Project Management Conversation with Joy Gumz, PMP. While most of us are project managers, Joy Gumz focuses on project audits. Her company is Project Auditors, LLC and she travels the world as a project auditor helping companies identify troubled areas on their projects before they become real problems. Would you like to know what issues she encounters most often during her project audits? Listen in. We also introduce you to several Helpful Resources that will help you to explore the topic of Project Auditing in more detail.

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How many project management books do you read per year? 1, 2, 3, 5 or even more? If you do read them then you will know the value that new books have in our profession: they take us to the next level. Whether it is a book on Napoleon on Project Management or one that is called Surprise now you are a Software Project Manager they all move our profession forward. So what kind of thoughts would a new project management book titled “The Fiddler on the Project” evoke from you? From me, it evokes that if I were a rich man, I would probably invest in it. Our guest today is Rich Maltzman, PMP and he would like you to write this book for him. Yes… you read right – he wants you to write his book. At least parts of it. Listen to the interview to learn more and get involved in some project management social networking.

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Today we are featuring a Project Management Conversation with Randy Magdaluyo whom we already met in Episode 73. This time we get a glimpse of the complexities that he as a project manager in the financial industry is faced with. I always found this aspect of project management to be one of the most fascinating facets. We all do the same thing, which is managing projects. But our industries are so different that by talking to a PM in engineering or the financial industry it almost seems that we are not working on the same general discipline. But in the end it is our job to get one task after the other completed, so that when all the tasks are completed, the project is done. And that is the beauty of project management - it may not look like we have the same job but we do.