Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Are you learning project management from the school of hard knocks? Listen in for some pragmatic, practice-based insights into project leadership. Hear advice about psychological safety, building appreciation, organizational learning, risk analysis and much more. Tips to boost your project success and encourage self-managing, high-performing teams.

Table of Contents

01:18 … Meet Kiron04:53 … Psychological Safety07:15 … Soliciting Feedback09:25 … Building in Appreciation11:22 … An Appreciation Board13:32 … Accountability from Within14:31 … Embedded Continuous Improvement15:04 … Unconscious Yet Effective Delegation16:54 … Translating Lessons Learned into Organizational Learning18:12 … Information Radiators for Lessons Learned19:25 … Psychologically Safe Evidence Based Retrospectives21:50 … Leader Goes First22:57 … Retrospect on the Retrospectives24:00 … When Someone Leaves the Project25:45 … Building Bridges with Functional Managers27:02 … Risk Management27:57 … Risk Management as Insurance30:16 … Delphi Technique on Qualitative Risk Analysis31:54 … Words of Advice32:54 … Get in Touch with Kiron34:01 … Closing

KIRON BONDALE: When I started my career in project management, I was obsessed with the process side of it, the practices, the tools, the techniques of project management.  I wanted to build the world’s greatest schedule.  I ignored the people.  And I forgot that it’s people that deliver project outcomes, not the processes, not the practices.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Listeners, remember if you’re claiming PDUs, check out our website for the instructions for the new procedure.  I am Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates.

BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Good morning, Bill.

BILL YATES:  Good morning to you.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Today we’re very excited to have Kiron Bondale joining us by Skype.  Kiron is a senior consultant for World Class Productivity,and he’s worked in the project management domain for over 25 years.  He is also an active member of PMI and has served as a volunteer director on the board of PMI Lakeshore Chapter for six years.  And Bill, you’re going to tell us about his book.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  I really enjoyed Kiron’s book.  It’s called “Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice.”  He’s a prolific writer.  He’s been blogging for years.  And he’ll describe what inspired him to write this book.  But this book is really practical, filled with advice for project managers, very topical.  We’re going to poke into some of the examples, but I really encourage people to check it out. 

Meet Kiron

WENDY GROUNDS:  Kiron, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest.

KIRON BONDALE:  Thank you for giving me the opportunity.  I really appreciate it.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I want to ask you first, why did you write the  book, and what was your thought behind this book?

KIRON BONDALE:  Yes.  It really was prompted by a challenge my father had given me almost two decades ago now, where when I told him I was thinking about starting a blog, and he looked at me, and he kind of said, you know, blogs are for amateurs.  And this is in the early days, when there weren’t a whole lot of people in the blogosphere.  But he kind of said, you know, forget about these 400, 500-word things.  If you want to be serious, write a book.

And my father and I, we disagreed on a variety of topics over the time we spent together.  But that kind of challenge stayed in the back of my head all of these years.  And when I got to roughly about 500 articles in the blog, I started thinking, you know, rather than having to create something from scratch, there’s enough good content there that it probably begs the question, could I not collate it, curate it, create a book from it?  And having some free time on my hands over the Christmas holidays last year,

Pioneering the development of human monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for viral diseases, in 2019 the Crowe Lab did a simulated pandemic outbreak and developed a record breaking rapid antibody discovery platform. Dr. James E. Crowe, Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center shares how in 2020, as they were getting ready to do another simulation, right in the middle of their preparations COVID happened. Hear the fascinating story of how his team pivoted to launch a project with no reagents, no information, and no samples. 

Table of Contents

01:37 … Meet James03:12 … What is an Antibody?04:17 … Monoclonal Antibodies06:44 … The Human Immunome Project09:25 … Secrets in our Bloodstream12:02 … COVID Response15:55 … Getting the Team to Pivot20:02 … Concerning Vaccine Hesitancy26:25 … Decision Analysis and Risks28:06 … Deciding on Intellectual Property34:02 … Formal Project Management in the Lab36:35 … After Action Reviews38:01 … Project Management Processes and Practices42:45 … Get in Touch with James43:50 … Closing

JAMES CROWE: I like the complexity of it, and I like working with project managers because they like seeing the complexity.  And the bottom line is getting things done in a complex environment.  That’s getting stuff out the other end and not being discouraged by that, but enjoying the complexity.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast for project managers by project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds; and, as always, here in the studio with me is Bill Yates.

Listeners remember if you’re claiming PDUs for our podcast, as well as for our courses, check out our website. Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions. 

We are so glad you’re joining us today.  We have a special guest.  This is Dr. James Crowe, and he’s a physician scientist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  He’s the director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center and the Ann Scott Carell Chair.  He’s a Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.

BILL YATES:  Dr. Crowe has pioneered development of human monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for viral diseases.  He’s going to describe to us what that means.  I think we’ve all heard about antibodies lately.  But he can describe it from a science perspective.  And they’d done a lot of work on antibodies prior to the COVID pandemic.  But when the pandemic hit, his team pivoted, and we’ll talk with him about that.  In fact, the Crowe team won an award in December 2020.  They were recognized for their work on COVID antibody research, and that’s a fantastic award that recognizes the achievement that they’ve had in that field.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  So he gives some great project management advice in this podcast.  It’s really interesting to hear his perspective.  And also something we ask James is why we’re still debating the social good and the necessity of vaccines.  And he touches on that, as well.  So let’s talk to James.  Hi, Dr. Crowe.  Thank you so much for joining us today.

Meet James

JAMES CROWE:  Yeah, thanks for having me.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re just so excited to talk with you today, to clarify some issues about vaccines and about immunization.  And I think you’re just the right person to talk to.  But I want to just go back a little bit and find out what is your mission as a scientist in the vaccine area?  How did you get started in this?  And what really is your goal?

JAMES CROWE:  Well, I trained originally as a pediatrician, and ultimately worked in various places around the world.  I traveled in Papua New Guinea and Sub-Saharan Africa and various exotic places, thinking that I might spend my life trying to make the world a better a better place for children who are in challenging situations.  And when you’re there, you see infectious diseases as a big part of the challenge.  Ultimately I trained as an infectious disease specialist to try to work on prevention of disease, infectious diseases,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. For project managers who are ready to up their game with risk management, Prasad Kodukula clarifies Next-Generation Project Risk Management and talks us through six specific risk response tools that will help you manage risks more effectively.

Table of Contents

02:03 … Meet Prasad03:19 … Next Generation Project Risk Management09:12 … Tool 1: Ambiguity Risks12:49 … Tool 2: Emergent Risks14:07 … Dealing with Unknown Unknowns18:40 … Tool 3: Opportunities23:07 … Tool 4: Integration of Cost and Schedule Risks24:34 … Communicating Risks to Upper Management28:59 … Tool 5: Adaptive Technique – Iterative and Incremental methods32:02 … Tool 6: Risk Response Strategies35:14 … Get in Touch with Prasad35:44 … Closing

Prasad Kodukula:  We’ve got to break down those silos so that we can communicate more freely, more quickly across different functions because when we are talking about resiliency, we want to make sure that we could put together a cross-functional team very quickly that could work cohesively together.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Listeners you can still claim your free PDUs.  The steps to submit a PDU for our podcast, as well as for our InSite courses to PMI, has changed.  Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions.  Make sure not to use the autofill, but type in “Velociteach” and the title when you are submitting your PDUs.  We do apologize for the inconvenience.

I am Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates. 

Bill, today we’re talking with Prasad Kodukula.  He is a PMI Fellow, a PMI advisor, thought leader, coach, author, and entrepreneur with more than 35 years of experience.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, I think people will quickly figure out Prasad is an overachiever.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Absolutely.

BILL YATES:  He’s taken three big awards with PMI:  the 2010 Distinguished Contribution Award, the 2016 Eric Jenett Project Management Excellence Award, the 2020 PMI Fellow Award.  So this guy is very well decorated.

WENDY GROUNDS:  He is also a self-proclaimed global ambassador of project management.  He’s spoken on project management and innovation leadership in nearly 50 countries, and I enjoy talking to him about South Africa.  He goes there quite often.  Unfortunately, with COVID, he hasn’t been able to get there.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  But we were able to talk a little bit about South Africa, which was really cool.

BILL YATES:  Talk about home.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  So Prasad is going to talk with us today about one of the topics that’s of keen interest to him and certainly to us.  He’s going to look at risk management and describe six next-generation tools for risk management.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Prasad.  Thank you so much for joining us.

PRASAD KODUKULA:  Hello, Wendy.  Thank you for having me.

Meet Prasad

WENDY GROUNDS:  Prasad, with a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, you obviously did not set out in your career intending to become a project manager.  How did you discover that this was the path for you?

PRASAD KODUKULA:  Well, that’s an interesting question.  You are right, Wendy.  I did not start to make a project manager in my career.  And it happens with a lot of people.  It happened to me by accident.  So I call myself an “accidental project manager.”  So I started as an R&D engineer, and within two or three years they asked me to manage projects.  I didn’t know anything about it.  I said sure.  Sounded like a pretty good idea, sounded like a nice title to have, so I became a project manager by sheer accident.

BILL YATES:  That’s hilarious because, you know, you think, okay, here’s Prasad, an accidental project manager, which you’ve won three amazing awards with PMI.  You’re a PMI Fellow, which is really the feather on the top of the cap.  That’s an amazing award.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Kupe Kupersmith, talks with us about creating healthy Agile teams. Trust, healthy conflict, commitment, and peer-to-peer accountability build healthy teams which produce winning results. When you have “One Team” that is focused and stable, you are closer to achieving that winning team performance.

Table of Contents

01:03 … Meet Kupe02:21 … Splitting a Large Team05:24 … Assessing How to Split Teams07:30 … Reactions to Team Splitting10:15 … Responsibility Diagramming14:27 … Adding Remote Complexity15:20 … The Five Dysfunctions of a Team16:31 … Lack of Trust18:18 … Steps to Build Trust20:45 … Healthy Conflict22:40 … Being Comfortable with Conflict26:16 … Commitment28:32 … Peer-to-Peer Accountability29:43 … ELMO32:41 … Producing Results34:57 … Get in Touch with Kupe35:36 … Closing

KUPE KUPERSMITH: ...it’s about that team members feel that everybody has their back; that, if I do something wrong, someone’s going to swoop up and help me and be there, that I can be transparent and ask for help and feel comfortable that nobody’s going to throw me under the bus.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Just a little update about claiming your PDUs.  The steps to submit a PDU for our podcast as well as for our InSite courses to PMI has changed.  Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions.  Make sure not to use the autofill, but type in Velociteach and the title when you are submitting your PDUs.  We do apologize for the inconvenience.  But thank you for listening, and please contact us if you need any additional assistance.

I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  This is our opportunity to talk with you about issues that project managers are facing today.  And sometimes it’s working remotely, sometimes it’s working on teams, and sometimes it’s all of that together.  Our guest today is somebody we’ve had on before.  He is Kupe Kupersmith, and he was on Episode 62, where we talked about BAs and PMs, decision-making for superheroes.

BILL YATES:  I’m excited about this topic.  I think at a macro level it’s all about healthy teams.

Meet Kupe

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  Kupe is the coauthor of “Business Analysis for Dummies.”  He’s had quite an eclectic career path.  He has been an accountant, an improv comedian, IT consultant, business analyst, and a project manager.  He has collaborated with us on some courses.  One was the “Overview of Lean Business Analysis.”  And currently he’s working on a course on remote Agile delivery.  Kupe, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for being our guest today.

KUPE KUPERSMITH:  Thanks for having me.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I have a quick question, before we get into our discussion.  It was 2018 when we had you last on the podcast.  So what have you been doing since then?

KUPE KUPERSMITH:  Wow, has it been that long?  I feel like...

WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s been that long.

KUPE KUPERSMITH:  I feel like I was in your office; and then, poof, you asked me to do another one.  But I guess it’s been two years.  Well, prior to 2020 I was doing a lot of keynote speaking.  And we talked some about improv, I think, and the improv work I do, and how I talk about improv and how it helps people be better collaborators, communicators, team players.  So doing a lot of that.  I’m also an IT consultant, so I’m out there with companies kind of implementing Agile practices and other practices to have effective teams and get teams to deliver the great products that our customers want.

Splitting a Large Team

BILL YATES:  You’ve been partnering with us on courses, and there are so many nuggets.  I just wanted to have a conversation about being a healthy team or creating a healthy team.  One of those I thought was really unique, and you talked about when your team is too large.  I think in the example you gave you had 36 team members that were needed to get the job done...

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Projects are more successful when we play to the strengths of the team. Hear about a new technology platform for building high-performing and successful teams. Create a winning team culture by identifying the unique preference, proficiency, and personality that an individual brings to the table.

Table of Contents

00:05 … New PDU Claim Process00:54 … Meet Darrin02:53 … Cloverleaf: How it all Began04:56 … Consistent Team Performance09:19 … Choosing the Right Tool for a Successful Team12:10 … When to Pivot your Plan14:39 … What can Cloverleaf do for a Project Team?17:53 … Partnering with Other Assessment Tools19:49 … After the Assessment: Getting Stuff Done24:09 … Tools for Team Members27:06 … Application for Traditional or Agile Methodology27:57 … Keeping Remote Teams Motivated31:25 … Being Authentic32:32 … “Corporate Bravery”33:45 … Get in Touch with Darrin34:53 … Closing

WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. 

New PDU Claim Process

Just a little update about claiming your PDUs. The steps to submit a PDU for our podcast, as well as for our InSite courses to PMI, has changed. Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions. Make sure not to use the auto-fill but type in Velociteach and the title, when you are submitting your PDUs. We do apologize for the inconvenience but thank you for listening and please contact us if you need any additional assistance.

I’m Wendy Grounds; and as always, here in the studio with me is Bill Yates.  Please make sure to visit our website, Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to the show so you will never miss an episode.  While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating on iTunes or a comment on our website.  Or if you’d simply tell a friend, that would help us out, too. 

Meet Darrin

We like to share stories of interesting projects, and we like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things which can impact the world of project management.  And that brings me to today’s guest, Darrin Murriner.  He is the cofounder and CEO of Cloverleaf.me.  It’s a technology platform for building high-performing teams.  Prior to founding Cloverleaf, he managed large and complex teams at companies such as Arthur Andersen and Fifth Third Bank.  And he is the author of a book called “Corporate Bravery,” and he’s going to tell us a little bit more about that book later on.  But Bill, do you want to tell us a bit about Cloverleaf?

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  We have had conversations and dedicated podcasts to talking about team building and talking about assessing strengths.  We’ll reference some of those later in the ‘cast, I’m sure.  But we know that successful teams lead to successful projects.  So any tools that we can put in the hands of our listeners that will make them better at equipping their teams and making them more effective, man, we’re excited about showing those.

Someone brought to our attention this toolset called Cloverleaf.  And fortunately, we’ve got the CEO, Darrin, who’s going to talk with us about Cloverleaf.  It’s a teambuilding tool.  And you can take something like StrengthsFinder or Myers-Briggs or DISC or other assessments that you do on your team, and you have all this data, and then you need something to help you take those next steps.  So I think this conversation will give us some ideas.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Right.  A thing to note, I just want to say to our listeners, is that we don’t receive any compensation for talking about Cloverleaf.  We just came across them.  Someone told us about them.  And we want to share that with our audience.  We’re not getting a free subscription to Cloverleaf for our team.

BILL YATES:  We need to ask Darrin about that, yeah.  We’re not getting anything for this.  Again, this is just a toolset that we wanted to make people aware of.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Right.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. How can practitioners incorporate sustainability and social value into their current practice? Karen Thompson and Nigel Williams are the co-creators of Responsible Project Management, an initiative that aims to accelerate achievement of sustainable development goals, encouraging responsibility in the context of projects and project management.

PLEASE REFER TO OUR ‘CLAIM PDUS’ PAGE TO NOTE THE CHANGES TO THE PDU CLAIM PROCESS.

Table of Contents

02:12 … The History of Responsible Project Management06:42 … Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility07:45 … Changing the Role of the Project Manager10:43 … Correctly Defining Sustainability12:24 … Who Might I be Hurting through This Work?16:38 … Questions to Ask as a Responsible Project Manager19:51 … When it’s Not about Success or Failure22:19 … How to Raise Awareness amongst Stakeholders24:48 … A Manifesto for Responsible Project Management29:40 … 2021 The Year of Responsible Project Management32:02 … Learn More about Responsible Project Management33:13 … Closing

WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  And we’d like to wish you a very happy New Year.  This is 2021, and we hope it’s going to be a good one.

BILL YATES:  Oh, yes.  It’s got to be.

WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s got to be better.  We like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things in the world of project management.  And that brings us to today’s guests.  Dr. Karen Thompson is a senior academic at Bournemouth University Business School in the U.K.  She’s a project professional turned innovative educator.who has done a lot of research and education in managing projects sustainably.

And we have Dr. Nigel Williams, the Reader in Project Management and research lead at the University of Portsmouth.  Karen and Nigel co-lead the Responsible Project Management Initiative, which is aimed to encourage sustainability and social responsibility in an ethical manner by project managers.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, sustainability is a topic that we’ve hit on a few times.  And I know just recently we interviewed Scott Berkun, and we focused on his book, “How Design Makes the World.”  Berkun talked about four questions in that book, and the fourth question:  Who might be hurt by your work, now or in the future?  This conversation that we’re going to have today just goes right in line with that.  I think some projects produce amazing things, could be a product or a service.  But we don’t really think about the fallout.

We had conversations with Henk about the ocean cleanup project; right?  Episode 106.  Orbital space debris.  We talked with Dr. Heather about that problem in Episode 75.  We all want our cell phones to work.  We want to have GPS.  But what happens when the satellite dies?

Sustainability is something that we’re passionate about.  This kind of takes it to another level.  It’s challenging to me as a project manager to think about, okay, in my day-to-day work, how can I be considering these questions?  So I’m excited about this conversation.

WENDY GROUNDS: Not so long ago we spoke to Kaitlyn Bunker about the Islands Energy Program.  And that was also an incredible program where they’re really thinking about what is the good that we are bringing in our projects. And with that, let’s get talking to Karen and Nigel.

The History of Responsible Project Management

Karen, could you tell us a little bit about the history of Responsible Project Management, how you started it?

KAREN THOMPSON:  Yes, certainly.  Well, how it started was way back in 2017 I’d just finished my Ph.D.  And one of the things that I uncovered while doing that were all the claims that project management research – there were criticisms around it not being relevant enough to practice.  So in 2017 I held a sort of networking event where ...

The podcast for project managers by project managers. As the COVID pandemic began to unfold, staff at an Israeli hospital knew that clinical teams were going to be at high-risk and critically over-burdened.  The COVOD-19 Sprint project united doctors and developers to find creative technological solutions to the medical challenges of the pandemic.

Table of Contents

02:19 … Meet Marina04:36 … The mission of the COVID Sprint07:30 … Volunteer Response09:45 … Marina’s Role in the COVID-19 Sprint10:14 … The Multiple Teams addressing the Challenges11:41 … Remote Collaboration13:32 … Information Sharing15:25 … Remote Leadership17:09 … Encouraging the Team19:08 … Technology Challenge for ICU Patients22:08 … Patient/Staff Protection: Portable Tent23:25 … Sharing Breakthroughs23:54 … COVID-19 Sprint Timeframe24:26 … Biggest Surprises26:03 … Lessons Learned28:51 … Hear more about the COVID-19 Sprint29:56 … Closing

MARINA DARLOW: Nobody really knows what we’re doing.  We are all improvising.  We’re all doing it to the best of our ability.  And we’re all  putting everything we had.  So in this case you’re not alone in being uncertain.  And you’ll be just fine as long as you’re engaged.  People make mistakes.  We adjust, you know, like Agile methods.  You do the best you know.  And when you know better, you do better.  And you’re very much not unique in this.  All these amazing people that you work with, they operate kind of in the same mode.

WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  To our listeners, don’t forget to claim your free Professional Development Units when you finish listening to this podcast.  I am Wendy Grounds.  In the studio today with me is Bill Yates.

BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We have a very interesting project that we’re going to talk about.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s about a project that’s in Israel, which united doctors and developers to find some creative solutions to the COVID-19 challenges.  The hospital is the Israeli Hospital, Assuta Ashdod.  They knew that the clinical teams were going to be both at high risk, and they’re going to be severely overburdened when the COVID pandemic started to unfold.  And so they started the COVID-19 Sprint.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

WENDY GROUNDS:  And our guest that we’re talking to today is Marina Darlow.  She was the technology projects manager and the operations coordinator of this sprint.

BILL YATES:  Yes.  Marina is going to share a lot of information with us.  Just how much they accomplished, how quickly; and how they brought together talent from the medical field, from hardware, software, technology solutions that is pretty mind-blowing.  There’s some abbreviations that we need to cover, too.  So I think everybody’s familiar with AWS, so Amazon Web Services.  Amazon Web Services Israel, specifically.  There’s also mention of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force.  They were a part of this initiative with the hospital.  And also Rafael, the Israeli defense organization, so that gets mentioned, as well.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I’m really excited that we’re heading to Israel to talk about our project.  I have been trying to get many international projects, so this one is kind of exciting.

BILL YATES:  We’ve been to space; let’s go to Israel.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Marina, welcome to Manage This.

MARINA DARLOW:  Thanks for having me.

Meet Marina

WENDY GROUNDS:  You are from Israel, and I’m very interested to hear your story, why you moved over to the U.S., and how you experienced that as a career change.

MARINA DARLOW:  It’s been a while, actually.  We moved for my husband’s Ph.D., decided that the program he wants is only available at Brown.  And it was clearly an adjustment.  The culture is different.  I’m used to much more, was used to much more direct and abrasive, some say obnoxious, way of communicating.  So I had to temper down and learn to smooth the r...

The podcast by project managers for project managers. An episode about detecting imminent failure and dealing with project issues that could lead to failure. The project manager’s approach to supporting the team, addressing issues, and communicating resolutions is crucial for any project facing adversity.

Table of Contents

01:56 … Meet Susan03:54 … Susan’s Project Story08:30 … When Nobody Speaks Up10:59 … Warning Signs15:55 … When is the Project Manager at Fault19:38 … Sequestering the Team22:25 … Maintaining Communication Channels26:40 … Root Cause Analysis28:30 … Documenting Lessons Learned31:06 … The Resolution of Susan’s Project34:05 … Get in Touch with Susan35:03 … Closing

SUSAN IRWIN:  It’s not about ego.  It is about furthering the practice of project management, it is about making everybody great.  It is about working together as a unified team. Not just a project team, but a project manager team, to make each one of us great.

WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  So an interesting thing happened to us the other day. As we were preparing to record this podcast, two days ago, we had some equipment failure.

BILL YATES:  Yes, we did.

WENDY GROUNDS:  And that amounts to a project failure.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Have you ever had a project fail, Bill?

BILL YATES:  Yes, I certainly have.  I think most who are listening to this can relate.  I think it was quite ironic that we would have a project failure, even with our episode as we were going to record this. First time.  That’s too funny.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Fortunately, Danny got us fixed up, and we’re ready to go today.

BILL YATES:  You know, Wendy, it occurs to me this topic is one that is really rich.  And we offer an online course by Neal  Whitten on this topic of project failure.  It’s called “17 Top Reasons Why Projects Fail.”  Neal goes through those.  He introduces those 17, and then of course talks about how we can avoid them.  So another way we can go deeper in this topic.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re actually talking with someone who has experience in project failure.  Our guest is Susan Irwin, and she’s an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama, Collat School of Business.

BILL YATES:  Wendy, this is going to be a pertinent conversation for our listeners.  And I’m excited to have Susan with us.  She has great information about both how to detect when failure is imminent with a project, and then advice.  So she gives four areas of advice for those that are dealing with project issues that could lead to failure.  So let’s get into it with Susan.

Meet Susan

WENDY GROUNDS:  Susan, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest.

SUSAN IRWIN:  Yes, thank you.  I’m so excited to be able to share my ideas.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re looking forward to hearing your story.  But I want to ask you about your career background.  Can you tell me how you got into project management?

SUSAN IRWIN:  So I’ve been doing this for about 15 years.  And so like most project managers that have been doing it for this long, I actually stumbled into it by happenstance. I was a developer by trade.  I was really content on spending my life in the development side of the house.  A manager at the time saw something in me, and this was back when project management was first starting to come into industry.  You didn’t really see it much outside of the government sector. 

He asked me if I wanted to step into this role as a project manager. I really was apprehensive about it because I didn’t really see at that time the value in project management.  I felt that project managers were more of the gatekeeper and less of the facilitator of getting work done. And so I begrudgingly did it, and I fell in love with it.

So I went in, I did my PMP certification, and fell in love with it.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. The sales team and the project manager - how to improve that complex relationship.  Advice for the project teams who have to deliver what sales has sold and why sales professionals should be kept engaged in the project from start to finish.

Table of Contents

01:56 … Meet James

03:06 … BrandMuscle

04:17 … The Sales Guy’s Perspective

08:56 … The Pressure on the Sales Team

11:37 … How to Deliver what Sales has Sold

15:17 … Project Handoff

17:20 … Scrutinize the Contract

18:48 … Advice for the Sales Team

21:33 … The Project Kickoff

23:57 … Sales and Identifying Risks

25:13 … The Project Handoff

26:56 … Leadership Influencers

28:07 … Career Advice

29:42 … Connect with James

30:23 … Closing

JAMES MORSE:  ...as

you balance that relationship with sales, you naturally develop a trusting

relationship between the project team and the sales team.  And that’s so helpful because then I trust

the salesperson to deliver something correctly, and they trust me to actually

deliver on that and make sure that that project gets in time, is in budget, is

in scope, and it delivers a happy customer.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our opportunity to meet with you and

talk about issues that project managers are facing today.  We hope you’ll continue to tell us what you

like and offer your suggestions.  You can

leave a comment on Google, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or whatever

podcast listening app you use.  You can

also leave comments on the Velociteach.com website or on our social media

pages.  I am Wendy Grounds, and with me

in the studio is Bill Yates.

BILL YATES:  Wendy, we’re going to have a fun conversation

today.  We’ve got a great topic.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes, we have.  And we have a great guest, too.  So his name is James Morse, and he serves as the Vice President and Head of Product for BrandMuscle.  He’ll tell us a little bit more about BrandMuscle coming up.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And James is unique in that he served the project manager role and also the sales role, project manager first in his career and then later in sales, and so really what we’re going to talk about is the hatred between project managers and sales.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I’d

say a particularly strong dislike.

BILL YATES:  Yeah,

there’s so many project managers who have discovered that their sales team has

made some promises or overcommitments that now the project manager and the team

have to deliver.  So we’re going to talk

about that.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I think so, we’re going to boil it down to communication.

BILL YATES:  Yes, we

are.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Let’s

talk with James.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  James,

welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for

being our guest today.

JAMES MORSE:  Thanks

for having me.

Meet James

WENDY GROUNDS:  Can

you tell us how you started your career, and how you ended up in the role that

you’re in today?

JAMES MORSE:  Yeah, absolutely. So I think I’m very lucky to, right out of school, have gotten an opportunity within project management, which I think a lot of my peers didn’t necessarily do.  They started with other careers and kind of paced into that, so I really hit the ground running.  I was doing new client onboardings and implementations, which has really just been a lot of the breadth of my career when it comes to project management.  And then I’ve slowly just transitioned into different opportunities, typically in SaaS and software, which has taken me to where I am currently with BrandMuscle.

So I’ve been with BrandMuscle for a little over seven years, similar background even within the organization.  I started with new client onboardings and implementations in the project lead role and just slowly grew within that to project manager, to senior project manager, leading our team of project managers within implementation,

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Dr.

Kaitlyn Bunker, Ph.D., P.E. is a Principal with Rocky Mountain Institute’s

Islands Energy Program. Kaitlyn leads a diverse team that partners with islands

in the Caribbean to support and accelerate their clean energy transitions.

Their projects result in many benefits, including the use of more local,

renewable energy sources and less imported fuel.

Table of

Contents

01:33 … Meet Kaitlyn 02:56 … The Rocky Mountain Institute 05:31 … Projects in the Caribbean Islands 08:20 … Program Partners 09:10 … Local Island Energy Resources 10:15 … Aligning Stakeholders, Local Communities and Project Priorities 13:11 … Project funding 14:28 … Compliance and Regulatory Guidelines and Knowledge Sharing 17:59 … Project Risks 20:10 … Leading a Very Diverse Team 22:27 … Leading Remotely 23:25 … The Resilience of Clean Energy 27:05 … Impact of Battery Technology 28:51 … Cultural and Communication Challenges 31:18 … Kaitlyn’s Lessons Learned and a Success Story 34:27 … Hear More about RMI 35:04 … Closing

KAITLYN BUNKER:  So we

really come in and do a lot of listening, meet with as many people as we can,

understand different perspectives and try to bring that all together, and then

pair that with our experience.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Please make sure to visit our website, Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode, or you can join us on Velociteach Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.  And if you know a friend who would like to hear our show, please tell them about Manage This.

I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me today is Bill Yates.  Bill, so you know I’m always trying to find interesting projects.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Projects that are all over the world, not necessarily in one spot, and so this one is all over the islands, the Caribbean islands.  Our guest is Kaitlyn Bunker, and she’s a principal with the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Island Energy Program, where she leads a team that partners with islands in the Caribbean to support their clean energy transitions.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, and just to be clear, this is Ph.D. Kaitlyn Bunker, so Dr. Bunker, I just wanted to say that, Dr. Bunker.  She also leads modeling efforts related to small island microgrid opportunities.  So a microgrid, she’ll explain that further.  But it’s a new strategy for having power distributed across an island, especially in the cases of places like the islands in the Caribbean that are prone to hurricanes and other types of storms.  So a microgrid strategy is a very interesting strategy, and we’ll talk about her projects.

Meet Kaitlyn

WENDY GROUNDS:  Let’s

meet Kaitlyn.  Kaitlyn, welcome to

Manage This.

KAITLYN BUNKER:  Thank

you for having me.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Tell

us about your career path, how you got to where you are today.

KAITLYN BUNKER:  Sure, so I’m now a principal with the Islands Energy Program at Rocky Mountain Institute.  But my background is that I studied electrical engineering,  I went to school at Michigan Technological University and got really excited in the field of power and energy, and also control systems.  And so bringing those two topics together led me to the concept of microgrids, which are small electricity systems that have their own sources of electricity.  So they’re able to use that to serve local electricity needs in a small confined system.  But they also typically can connect to the larger electricity grid. So they’re able to operate in kind of those two modes.  And so that was really exciting for me, especially the concept of incorporating more renewable energy into microgrids and combining those concepts together.

So I got really excited about that in school and decided I

wanted to dig into that further.  So I

stayed right at Michigan Tech for graduate school, completed my Ph.D.