The Project Management Podcast

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Play Now: Get The PM PrepCast for the PMP Exam on your mobile device: Dave Davis, PMP, PgMP, PBA Here is the first sentence in Mark Langley’s foreword of the in-depth report Delivering Value - Focus on Benefits during Project Execution, which PMI published as part of it’s Pulse of the Profession Series: A project is truly successful only if it delivers the benefits an organization envisions. Mark Langley, PMI President and CEO At first glance this sentence is awfully obvious to us project managers. But having good and successful benefits realization management and thereby turning this statement into a reality is what makes our job so hard. And rewarding. So what exactly are benefits realisation and benefits realisation management? Is there a benefits management process and how does all of this fit into project benefits management? How about if I let Dave L Davis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dldavispmp) explain it all to you? He has authored one of the articles in that Pulse of the Profession report from where I took the earlier quote. The article is titled “The Benefits Management Journey” and serves as our guide. We’ll learn what exactly benefits realization management is, review the process of implementing it on projects, meet the people involved, and we’ll even talk about tools. And at the very end of this episode you’ll learn that even failings project have benefits Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Coming Soon... Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

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Play Now: Looking for Project Management Professional (PMP)® training? Get PMP Exam Prep on your mobile device with The PM PrepCast: Bruce Harpham, PMP Does your project rely on virtual teams? If yes, then it means that working remotely is the norm for your project team members. Are they doing their work effectively and efficiently? And even if you answered yes, there is always room for improvement, right? Good, because how to make remote work productive is our topic today. Our interview guest is Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham and http://projectmanagementhacks.com) who has written about remote workers and how to increase all our effectiveness. He argues that working virtually is simply the reality on many projects and project teams these days. And so in order to help us improve remote work he recommends the following four steps: Evaluate your current tools Review communication preferences and strengths Analyze the project’s requirements Adjust your communication practices We’ll go through each of these in detail with lots of examples from his own experience. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Coming Soon... Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast. It's the best PMP Exam Prep on your mobile device: Lindsay Scott For over a decade now, Arras people has been publishing their yearly project management benchmark report and so I’ve invited Lindsay Scott (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/projectsmanagementrecruitment) to introduce it to us to this latest version. Lindsay says about the report, that even after all this time of doing the research and seeing the changes over the years, it is hard not to be drawn to the fact that project management is still an exciting and growing field. The fact that projects are still failing suggests that even with all the effort and time expended we are still searching for that magic bullet which will ensure we deliver. Of course, the report doesn’t give us this magic bullet, but it provides an interesting insight into what you and I are doing day after day. There are two options for you to get a copy of this report: First, download your copy right here... But your second option, which is actually the better one, is to visit the Arras People website and Request the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016. Because in that way you are also going to be invited to fill in the survey for the next report. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Coming Soon... Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.

Project Management Benchmark Report 2016 Click here to download the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016... Download your copy of the report simply by clicking on the link above. If, however, you want to be invited to take the survey for next year's report then please Request the Project Managment Benchmark Report 2016 directly from the Arras People website. You'll be asked to provide your basic information and will be contacted when the survey for the next report is sent out. It's a great way to give back to our community.

This is a Rebroadcast The PMI Global Congress 2016 North America will take place at the end of September 2016 in San Diego. This video and the worksheet that goes with it will help you prepare and make the most out of attending the conference! Play Now: Sorry. Your browser cannot play this video. We project managers attend many conferences. And I remember quite clearly how disappointed I was after some of these project management conferences because I realized that I didn’t get as much out of them as I had hoped. So I decided that instead of continuing to hope for more success, I would have to plan for it. This video and the accompanying checklist contain my personal best practices for conference success. I hope that it will help you plan for a successful conference as well. Please feel free to share any improvements ideas with me in the comment section below. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.  Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode # 280. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. This episode is all about getting the most out of a project management conference and we have a checklist for you as well. The idea for this episode and the checklist came to me a few days ago when I signed up for one of PMI's Global Congresses. I invested about $2,500 in my 3-day attendance at the congress. That's the congress fee, the plane ticket, the hotel so I decided you know what, with so much money at stake here, $2,500 quite a bit of chunk of money, I want to make this a success. And so I decided to develop this checklist for you and for me because we project managers attend many conferences and I remember quite clearly how disappointed I was of some of these conferences because I realized I didn’t get as much out of them as I had hoped. So I decided instead of continuing to hope for more success, I would have to plan for it. This checklist contains my personal best practices for conference success and I really hope that it allows you to plan for a successful conference as well. And of course, this checklist is available for download on The PM Podcast™ website. Just go to www.pm-podcast.com, Episode #280 and you'll see a link to download it. For the rest of this episode, we are now going to go through this checklist together. It has 3 sections --- before the conference, during the conference and after the conference. Or because we are all project managers here, it's nothing but the plan-do-check-act cycle. And of course the first section of the checklist before the conference that corresponds to the planning portion of the plan-do-check-act cycle. Frankly if you want to stop right now, just download the checklist and work on it offline, I am not going to be angry at all because the checklist is quite self-explanatory but continuing to view this video to listen to this episode here will probably help you because I'm going to give you a lot of background information and insights and ideas. Alright then, let's get's started with planning our conference attendance. It will come as no surprise to you that the first thing we're going to have to do is we are going to have to define goals. Why are we planning or attending this conference? So describe what you hope to gain or learn at the conference. Do stay realistic and plan to be able to achieve only one or two goals maximum. If you say yourself, 7,8, 9, 10 goals then suddenly everything becomes important and when everything is important, nothing is really important anymore. As an example here personally whenever I attend a conference, I want to bring value to the listeners of The Project Management Podcast™ and I often achieve in various ways by recording episodes, by recording interviews right there live on site or just bringing home new ideas, business cards of guests I can invite in the future or episodes that I record on

This is a Rebroadcast The PMI Global Congress 2016 North America will take place at the end of September 2016 in San Diego. This worksheet will help you prepare and make the most out of attending the conference! Click here to download the checklist for getting the most out of a project management conference... Use this worksheet to help you prepare for your next project management conference. It will make the difference between merely attending the conference and succeeding at attending the conference.

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast: Niraj Kumar, PMP Is PMP certification worth it? According to Niraj Kumar (www.leadproje.com -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thenirajkumar) the answer is an emphatic yes! He not only says that the PMP salary you can expect is greater on average, but he also found many other PMP certification benefits. Having a shared vocabulary and enjoying a completely different and often steep career path are just two of them. So if you are either already PMP certified or thinking about your own PMP Exam Prep and and wondering about the value of PMP certification, then this interview is definitely for you. Niraj and I explore the benefits of being or becoming a PMP from various aspects. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode #364. This is The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you very much for listening in. Please remember that we are a listener-supported podcast, so if you enjoy these interviews then please visit www.pm-podcast.com/premium Well is the PMP certification worth it? According to Niraj Kumar the answer is an emphatic yes. He not only says that the PMP salary that you can expect is greater on average, but he also found many other PMP certification benefits: having a shared vocabulary; and enjoying a completely different, and often steep, career path; are just two of them. If you are a project manager and you want to become PMP or PMI-ACP Certified, then the easiest way to do so is with our sister podcast The Project Management PrepCast or the Agile PrepCast and study for the exam by watching the in-depth exam prep video training from www.pm-prepcast.com. So if you are either PMP certified or you’re thinking about it and wondering about the value of PMP certification then this interview with Niraj Kumar is definitely for you. Niraj and I, we explore the benefits of being or becoming a PMP from various aspects. And now, getting there is half the fun; being there is all of it. Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female Voice: The Project Management Podcast's feature interview: Today with Niraj Kumar, who talks about leadership and leads a team of managers and engineers at his day job. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, Niraj and welcome to the program! Niraj Kumar: Hello, Cornelius. Thank you for inviting me! I’m honored, I’m very honored to be on your podcast. Cornelius Fichtner: Well, thank you very much, very happy to have you! So you became a PMP a long time ago. We want to talk about the value of the PMP® Exam. But what can our listeners expect to take away from our discussion today? Niraj Kumar: I think connecting to what you just said, our listeners can take away the fact that PMP certification does not add value just right now in their career right in this moment; it keeps adding value for a long time. And looking at a certification like this for the value it creates long term is a way to go. And it kind of takes the pressure off a little bit that you don’t have to gain everything right now. But it also lets a PMP understand that this is something that will keep helping them for a long, long time. Cornelius Fichtner: Why is it important for you to talk about this? Because I want to make it absolutely clear to the listeners—this interview wasn’t my idea! You wrote to me and said why don’t we do an interview about the value of the PMP exam. So, what is the importance for you? Niraj Kumar: The importance for me personally is that a certification and appealing for a certification, writing the exam, connecting with the community of certified professionals, kind of helps you on a self-growth. It puts you on a path to self-development. It gets you into a category of professionals who are not relying on others to help them develop, b

Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for PMP Exam Prep: Joseph Flahiff, PMP, PMI-ACP Have you heard of supportive leadership? I certainly had not. I knew what servant leadership was, but the concept of supportive leadership was a definite unknown. But that changed when Joseph Flahiff (www.whitewaterprojects.com -- www.linkedin.com/in/josephflahiff) got in touch with me and suggested this interview. I was intrigued. The good news is that Joseph is a prolific writer who has a number of articles on the topic. He reviews the concept from various angles and he also has a number of great examples of how he works with his customers to implement supportive leadership in their organizations and how he uses the concept as a project leader himself. You’ll be able to incorporate all of this as part of your own project leadership almost right away. And of course we will also touch upon the main difference between supportive leadership and servant leadership. You’ll be just as surprised as I was. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode #363. This is The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Have you heard of supportive leadership? I certainly had not.I knew what servant leadership was, but the concept of supportive leadership--that was a definite unknown. But that changed when Joseph Flahiff got in touch with me and suggested this interview. I was intrigued. The good news is that Joseph is a prolific writer who has a number of articles on the topic. He reviews the concept from various angles and he also has a number of great examples of how he works with his customers to implement supportive leadership in their organizations and how he uses the concept as a project leader himself. You'll be able to incorporate all of this as part of your own project leadership almost right away. And, of course, we will also touch upon the main difference between supportive leadership and servant leadership. You'll probably be just as surprised as I was. And now, enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female Voice: The Project Management Podcast's feature interview: Today with Joseph Flahiff, project management author, consultant and organizational alchemist. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, Joseph! Welcome back to the podcast. Joseph Flahiff: Hey Cornelius, thank you. Pleasure to be here. Cornelius Fichtner: So, supportive leadership is our topic today, but let me skip all the way to the end of our conversation. What is going to be the big takeaway that our listeners will learn from this discussion? Joseph Flahiff: I think the big takeaway will actually depend on where the listener is coming from. So, they'll either hear a completely new or, at least, a slightly new, different approach to leadership; or they will be hearing something that maybe confirms and gives them more language to speak about what they feel internally already. Cornelius Fichtner: So, is supportive leadership something new? Joseph Flahiff: Is supportive leadership new? It's not really necessarily new per se, but I've put a language and a framework around some things that I've always done and that I've seen work well in my clients. So, in that sense, as a thing it's relatively new. There's a million forms of leadership, and we're all trying to describe what great leadership looks like, and how we see great leaders act, so this is my framework for describing how great leaders work. Cornelius Fichtner: And talking how you describe this, you wrote several articles about supportive leadership and in them you talk about supportive leadership mostly in the context of line management and operations management. Does it translate over into project management? Joseph Flahiff: Absolutely. Actually, that's where I come from--the project management w