The Project Management Podcast

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Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep :

Agata Czopek and Cornelius Fichtner

In this interview we welcome Agata Czopek (LinkedIn Profile) and discuss that diversity is a fact and inclusion is a choice.

Companies with diverse executive teams are 21% more likely to outperform the companies rated in the bottom quartile of diversity. Have you ever experienced a situation that made you feel uncomfortable? Let’s discover the attributes of an inclusive leader and the steps needed to improve team performance by addressing unconscious bias.

This interview was recorded ad the crowded Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California. We learn to describe attributes of an inclusive leader, identify techniques to improve performance by addressing the unconscious bias, and see that privilege is invisible for those who have it.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

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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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Good news for all listeners of The Free PM Podcast out there: Your favorite business podcast is now available on Spotify! This means that if you hold a certification from Project Management Institute (PMI)® then you can start earning your PDUs right where you listen to your favorite music.

Note: If you have a paid subscription to The Premium PM Podcast then nothing changes for you because Spotify only accepts free podcasts.

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Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep :

Karthik Ramamurthy, Sripriya Narayanasamy and Cornelius Fichtner

In this interview we welcome Sripriya Narayanasamy (LinkedIn Profile) and Karthik Ramamurthy (LinkedIn Profile) who are the authors of the book Say Yes to Project Success. in 52 short and entertaining chapters the book gives actionable advice to project managers on the most common issues we are faced with on pretty much every project.

This interview was recorded ad the hectic and fantastic Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

Here is the book's abstract

We have chosen 4 chapters from the book ("Great Catches", "Last Mile Connectivity", "Fun with Risks", and "Feed me a Sandwich") in order to review them together.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we want you to say ‘yes’ to project success.

Hello and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I am Cornelius Fichtner.

Podcast Interview

Cornelius Fichtner: We are coming to you live from the hectic and fantastic 2018 PMI Global Conference in Los Angeles. And with me right now here in the hallways are two guests. I have Karthik Ramamurthy and Priya Narayanasamy with me here today. And since you all know that I only have one microphone for one guest, we’re splitting them up. Karthik is here first with the headset on. Good morning, Karthik!

Karthik Ramamurthy: Good morning, Cornelius, and I like the freedom of first not talking over each other.

Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! How is the conference going for you so far? Because in the opening, I said we are at the hectic and fantastic global conference. You chose ‘hectic’, why?

Karthik Ramamurthy: Absolutely! So many great sessions. So many great speakers. First of all, it has been difficult to choose someone’s sessions. Also for Priya and me, we had two topics selected. One a workshop on decision making and another on eight practical risk management success secrets. And PMI selected us to do encores for both so four presentations in three days plus attending all those great sessions, hectic is the word.

Cornelius Fichtner: No wonder you are saying it is hectic, yes. The one thing we want to talk about, however, this morning is not any of your presentations but your book. The two of you wrote a book together called “Say Yes to Project Success – Winning the Project Management Game”. It includes proven insights from 108 experts of that led 2,000 projects in 119 countries. And let’s see, it is about 160 pages thick. So you have 108 experts and 160, how did you pull this off to start with? How did you get 108 to contribute to your book?

Karthik Ramamurthy: It was tough. It was made even more complex because we had to do it is a short period of four months and I should congratulate Priya has a back office PMO in addition to the PMI. In fact, there are several people right here at this conference who are experts and contributors who run away when they see Priya. Because she cheers them so much to get the expert insights on time coordinating with them. I’m talking of course, they were all happy to be contributors to a global book.

Cornelius Fichtner: Right, and the book is slightly different because you use story telling in the book.

Karthik Ramamurthy: Yes and we used true stories, Cornelius, because I greatly admire Goldratt’s Critical Chain. I learned a lot from that book. It was a novel and that approach helped. But I realized in today’s generation, people don’t have the time to read a full novel. So we actually wrote 52 short stories each which starts with the situation a project manager is having, how it is affecting his/her project negatively.

There’s a turning point or an epiphany moment where they find the solution. Maybe through a piece of music, watching a movie or a conference session and they implement it. And we said let it not just be about the 50 hours of experience Priya and I have, let’s include global experts which is where at the end of every chapter, there are two global experts who talk about how they resolved that particular problem.

So the 52 stories are set against the 20 biggest project management failure factors in the world. And at the end of the book, there is an [anecdote] that talks about the 20 failure factors and we’ve linked those to the chapters that provide solutions. So if you are reading the book, you are looking at what your biggest pain points are and solutions to those pain points from a variety of experts. So we don’t think that’s a solutions book because there are a lot of great books on the theory of project management. But I’ve not seen too many on how to fix those problems in a very practical manner and which is why we wrote that book.

Cornelius Fichtner: Good! We want to jump into four of these chapters. You have selected two. Priya has selected two, and talk about those a little but more in detail. But before we do that, I have learned today that everyone of your presentation starts with a gimmick. You are catch-the-attention of your listeners, right?

Karthik Ramamurthy: Yes.

Cornelius Fichtner: And what we are going to do is since we are talking about the book, we are going to give away two copies of this book in three copies.

Karthik Ramamurthy: Yes.

Cornelius Fichtner: We’re going to give away three copies of this book in electronic format so it’s going to be the Kindle version of the book: “Say Yes to Project Success”. And what we are going to do is we are going to be putting up a question on our Facebook page. And the question is this: Who is Fern Suite Chronicle? Fern Suite Chronicle, who is…?

Karthik Ramamurthy: That is an anagram.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yes.

Karthik Ramamurthy: That’s an anagram, which means like the word “arts” can be rearranged to form “rats” or “star” or even “tsar”. You want to rearrange these letters to get the name of a very famous Podcast host.

Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! With that out of the way and just as a reminder, this is 2018. So if you’re listening to this in 2019 obviously, the giveaway will already be over. So let’s jump straight into the book. We are going to Chapter #47: Great Catches. That’s what the title is. What is the chapter all about?

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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Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Training :

Kevin Wozniak and Cornelius Fichtner

Got Meetings?

This interview focuses on effective meeting management. It covers one of the project management basics that is most difficult to handle - managing stakeholders using different combinations of direct, dotted line, and influential management.

This interview with Kevin Wozniak was recorded at the creative Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

In the interview we demonstrate how to effectively lead meetings and manage participants using various management styles and explain how to actively engage meeting attendees to participate in meetings in a valuable manner.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Kevin Wozniak: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we learn to actively engage meeting attendees to participate in meetings in a valuable manner.

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I am Cornelius Fichtner.

Podcast Interview

Cornelius Fichtner: We are coming to you live from the creative 2018 PMI Global Conference in Los Angeles. And right now sitting with me here on the window ledge in the middle of the hallway is Kevin Wozniak. Good afternoon, Kevin.

Kevin Wozniak: Good afternoon, Cornelius.

Cornelius Fichtner: How are you doing?

Kevin Wozniak: Doing fantastic. It’s been a great conference.

Cornelius Fichtner: Other than the seats are a bit hot here, we couldn’t find a real seat so we’re literally sitting on a window ledge for the interview here today.

You had your presentation yesterday on your topic of effective meeting leadership that engages. How did it go?

Kevin Wozniak: It went fantastic. We had a very engaging discussion. We had a good crowd show up.

Cornelius Fichtner: About 900 people right?

Kevin Wozniak: No, we had over a hundred, definitely. So it was a good crowd.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, what I found interesting is the fact that you’re talking on a topic that I’ve been doing The Project Management Podcast™ for about a dozen years now or so, I’ve had several speakers on it and I thought we had talked about everything there is to talk about. Yet you are giving a professional presentation at the largest project management conference out there. There is still need for this topic, very surprising.

Kevin Wozniak: When I was working on my presentation for this year, I was thinking about really what makes me ineffective at my job and what things could be improved on? And really meeting management seems to still be at the heart of some of our inefficiencies at what we are doing and at work. So when I was looking over the topic, I said: “Boy, all these things, I certainly make a list of everything that set my schedule off, mass emails, 200 emails a day, double, triple, quadruple books, starting meetings 5, 10 minutes late, having too many meeting attendees in the meeting.

A good example there is let’s say you invite 10 people to your meeting, if you invite 3 developers and the development manager so let’s say four people, you have let’s say you’re meeting for an hour, that’s 4 hours of time. Do you really need three developers there? You most likely only need the development manager. He should be able to cover. He or she should be able to cover for his staff and then you are saving 3 hours if you don’t have all those developers. Most likely, you’re going to be asking them a question that only requires two to three minutes of their time on that call but you’re going to waste an hour if you have them in there. So assign the right people. Assign the right point people that helps all immensely, but that’s just one of the examples of what we covered yesterday.

Cornelius Fichtner: So the presentation comes out of your personal pain points then?

Kevin Wozniak: It sure does. And I know the topics are not original. I know people have been through it before but then we took it up a step further during the presentation. We talked about alright, this can apply in-office or out of the office when you are working virtually. We really got into that remote management and how all the distractions of working virtually can really impact your effectiveness.

Cornelius Fichtner: And I thought as well, yeah, it doesn’t sound original but frankly, project management basics doesn’t sound original either. Yet there are always new project managers coming into the profession and they need to learn the basics. It’s the same with meeting management. There are people who are growing in their career. They are moving forward. They are moving up and suddenly they are charged with leading a meeting. And they have never done it before. So they have to be taught. So yes, it may not be an original topic but it’s an important topic and everybody needs to learn about it.

Kevin Wozniak: You’re absolutely correct. And that’s like one of the first things that we had actually talked about yesterday was setting an agenda and actually having that agenda. I have one for my presentation yesterday and that is again meeting management 101. We send in invite, have a clear discrete meeting invite and make sure there’s an agenda included in that meeting invite.

How many times you get a meeting invite that’s just two or three words; you have no idea what they are asking for and you go into the meeting, you are blind when you there, right? If you have an agenda set up, people will know what they are being asked for. Oftentimes, if I get an invite and it’s just a couple of words that I have no idea what they are asking for, I will decline the invite and we will ask that they resend it once they have the material that they want me to review beforehand and what the points are, what the questions are that they need to review.

Cornelius Fichtner: And oftentimes, there is also no goal for the meeting really.

Kevin Wozniak: Right so you go there. t’s just an open discussion and then that hits another topic there. Sometimes you’ll get a meeting invite that’s a fact-finding meeting. It’s a 30-minute meeting.

How many meetings can actually get done in 30 minutes if you are fact finding? Not very often. So then you go in, you jump in from 30-minute meeting to 30-minute meeting to 30-minute meeting and there’s really no break time between. A lot of times those 30-minute meetings go to 45 minutes and so on so you are missing your other meetings that you may actually have had to attend because you have to make 30-minute meetings.

Cornelius Fichtner: Right. How much time would you say somebody should spend on designing the agenda for their meeting?

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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Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep :

Douglas Knutzen and Cornelius Fichtner

What if you had to do your project in (near) half the time as previous projects, or be fired? What if your customer required you to do their project in (near) half the time to which you are accustomed or lose the business?

Hear about the techniques (that can be applied to almost any type of project) that helped to meet these challenges and got the products successfully to market in record time.

This interview with Douglas Knutzen was recorded at the inspirational Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

You'll hear about how to leverage scheduling, execution and team techniques to significantly increase speed on your projects, and (almost more importantly) how to lead project teams in high-pressure situations.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Douglas Knutzen: Hi, This is Doug Knutzen from Plexus Corporation. In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we will lever the scheduling, execution and team techniques to significantly increase speed on future projects.

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I am Cornelius Fichtner.

Podcast Interview

Cornelius Fichtner: We are coming to you live from the inspirational 2018 PMI Global Conference in Los Angeles. And I’m currently sitting here in Room 411A together with Doug Knutzen. Hello, Doug! Good afternoon!

Douglas Knutzen: Good afternoon, Cornelius. Thanks for having me.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah! So the audience has just left. This is a beautiful, beautiful venue that they have given you. How was the presentation?

Douglas Knutzen: It was really fun; it is a wonderful venue. I was really happy to be in the theater. The audience was great. I think we had about 200 people or so and I think it was well received. I think it went very well.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, I came in at the tail end and lots of questions. Lots of questions came.

Douglas Knutzen: Yeah, there were a lot of questions, very insightful questions.

Cornelius Fichtner: Always a good sign.

Douglas Knutzen: Yeah, I think so.

Cornelius Fichtner: In the opening, I said: “We’re coming to you live from the inspirational 2018 PMI Global Conference.” You chose the adjective ‘inspirational’. Why is it inspirational?

Douglas Knutzen: I think for two reasons. I think the two keynoters that we had this week particularly the gentlemen from the NFL, I’m sorry I can’t pronounce his last name.

Cornelius Fichtner: Neither can I, yup!

Douglas Knutzen: Who’s the magician, and had a great inspirational story there. He was just nothing short of fantastic and I think today’s speaker about the five generations and working through that, I thought he was very inspirational too.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, I saw myself in those slides definitely.

Douglas Knutzen: Yeah and they both did tremendously well.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah. Your presentation is called “Taking Your projects to Breathtaking Speed.” How did this presentation develop? Why are you talking on this topic?

Douglas Knutzen: Yeah, that’s a great question. Overtime, there were two projects that went really well that were both under significant duress and both went really, really quickly, really crazy speeds and they had to do that because of the duress they were under. And when I went back and looked at it, they were from two different companies and I thought there must be some correlations here. It’s like doing a lessons learned if you will. There must be some correlations that allow us to kind of see what were the correlations between these two projects and that’s what led to sort of the development of this specific talk.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, you said those two projects were under duress. What are some other more general reasons why we project managers are asked to go to breathtaking speed and take things to the next level.

Douglas Knutzen: Well obviously if you look at Triple Constraint, we are often looking at we’ve got a tight budget. We’re got to conserve or we’ve got schedule which we have to get down in a big hurry, right? Those are things that we’re often faced with as project managers and that’s often why we end up having to go fast, right? Or we have a customer need that’s specific and very demanding.

Cornelius Fichtner: What was the specific duress that your projects were under?

Douglas Knutzen: So each of them was different. Project number one, which was a neurology device. There was an interim CEO that came in and said the team has to do this in approximately half the time or you’re going to be fired. And that is something that truly did happen and created a lot of duress for the team so that would have been number one.

For project number two, the duress really was our customer came to us and said: ‘Hey, you’ve got competitors that will do this in 32 weeks. We need you to do it in less than that.’ In 31 weeks for a medical device is a very crazy timeline. And so it was a challenge. We felt that we could achieve that and we went on and did it. But it was driven by customer requirements.

Cornelius Fichtner: My wife used to work in medical devices so I do understand how there are externally-driven dates like the FDA that could just take you months just waiting for them to turn around.

So in the end you found six correlations between the two projects and we’re going to talk about four today. So let me just go quickly through them so our listeners know what they are: Number one was Planning, planning, planning. Number two, Rockstar teams. Number three, Organizational alignment. Number four, Earned value management, Number five, Probabilistic decision making and number six, Taking care of the details.

Now they say correlation is not causation, right, so that fact that these two projects have these six correlations is not necessarily the reason why you were successful and going so fast. Do you feel that no, no, no in this case, correlation is causation. These are not just the correlations but also the causes, the reasons why we were able to pull this off.

Douglas Knutzen: That’s a really good question. I think when you look at it, the correlation is really about these were the things that are in common, the correlations between the two projects that were reasons why they were successful. Certainly not the only reasons because projects are complex, but they were some of the reasons why they weren’t.

Cornelius Fichtner: So the first one we want to talk about is number one, Planning, planning, planning. How long did the planning phase take in these two projects? And by the way, just so you know folks, this is a question that one of the attendees asked him at the end and I figured, that’s a good question. Better ask that one as well.

Douglas Knutzen: It was a very good question. I would say for both projects, we spent at least two weeks on planning doing nothing but planning for each of the projects to ensure that we knew the full scope and make sure that we knew the breadth of all the tasks that we had to do before we could start doing the compression. Because when we pointed out in the talk, getting the full project plan laid out and then from there once we knew all the tasks, we could start to compress smartly with probability.

Cornelius Fichtner: Often when you’re asked to go really fast, there is a tendency to skip planning and go to production. How did you avoid making that mistake?

Douglas Knutzen: Yeah, that happens all the time. I think it was a conscious effort by both teams to say to the management team: ‘Hey! We need to plan this.’ It’s sort of like the faster you want to go, the better the plan has to be. We’ve got to get a good plan so we know what we’re facing. So we know what resources we’re going to need and what it will take to really do it. Without a good plan, you’re kind of operating in the dark and stuff.

Cornelius Fichtner: Were there any specific approaches that you took during planning in order to make this work?

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.