Episode 160 – Velociteach: Celebrating 20 Years of Project Management Training

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Andy Crowe shares project management advice and reflects on 20 years of training project managers at Velociteach. Hear about his bold move to step away from a successful project management career to launch Velociteach, and what he learned along the way. Listen in for tips on how to find balance if you’re overwhelmed, dealing with uncertainty, and managing changes.

Table of Contents

01:20 … Behind the Book03:05 … Comparison to Other PMP Exam Textbooks05:05 … Defining Success05:48 … Lessons Learned Starting Velociteach07:14… Challenges that PMs are Facing Today11:07 … Kevin and Kyle12:45 … Most Successful Project13:31 … Project Manager Competencies15:33 … Acquiring the Technical Knowledge17:15 … Tools and Techniques18:52 … A Team Replaced or Project Cancelled?21:07 … The Overwhelmed Project Manager22:50 … Finding Balance25:19 … Managing Changes and Unpredictability29:07 … Best of Project Management30:15 … Closing

ANDY CROWE: To me it’s such a joy to bring order into chaos.  It’s such a joy to deliver a solution, to make something, to build something.  I love that. 

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  We are so glad you’re joining us.  If you like what you hear, please visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can leave a comment on our Manage This Podcast page.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and here in the studio is Bill Yates and Andy Crowe.  Bill, this is a very special day today; isn’t it.

BILL YATES:  Yes, we’re celebrating 20 years, a 20-year birthday or...

WENDY GROUNDS:  Love birthdays.

BILL YATES:  ...anniversary for Velociteach.  That’s right, Velociteach started up in September of 2002.  And we just wanted to invite Andy into the studio just to pause and reflect on 20 years of Velociteach, and then ask him some personal questions; you know?  What makes a project manager successful?  What’s it like when your project gets canceled?  Tell us about starting a business.  So this will be a fun conversation, just to get inside the brain of Andy Crowe, CEO of Velociteach.

WENDY GROUNDS:  And I think he has a lot of great advice for younger project managers or project managers who are struggling.  He has some really good advice.  So take a listen.

Behind the Book

Hi, Andy.  Welcome back to Manage This.

ANDY CROWE:  Thank you.  I’m excited to be here.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, we’re excited to talk with you today.  So Velociteach, it all started with a book.  And writing a book is a huge project.  Could you tell us a bit about your book, “The PMP Exam:  How to Pass on Your First Try,” and your motivation to write it?

ANDY CROWE:  You know what, I was motivated because when I read other books I wasn’t happy with them.  And they didn’t explain things the way I did.  So, you know, certainly there were a lot of resources out there, and people definitely passed the PMP before this.  But it was something that I like to explain things.  I love to write.  I just write a lot regardless.  And so it was a good marriage of things.  As I was going through, I took all of my notes that I had used previously to study for the PMP and kind of put them to use and organized them.  And then it evolved over time.

BILL YATES:  I’ve known you for a while, and I think that’s a  natural evolution for you.  That’s part of your DNA is you look at something, you go through something personally like the PMP Exam.  And you go, you know what, I think I would have done better if I’d had this, or if.  It makes sense to me that you would go through that, pass the PMP Exam, and then go, you know, I think I could write a book about this.

ANDY CROWE:  Well, and also, you know, it was something that, as I’m going through trying to explain things, there were just things that I thought I would love to have stated that differently.  I would love to have explained this a different way.  And so, you know,