Do I need a Project Management Office (PMO)? Does anyone REALY need a PMO? Why, aren’t those all going away because of Agile? What value can a PMO give to an organization? And when does it not make sense to have a PMO? We go through all this and more on this 2 part podcast - check it out! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Project Management Happy Hour

062 - Do I really need a PMO? (Part 2 of 2)

061 - Do I really need a PMO? (Part 1 of 2)

We get asked a lot about what project management is about, what it’s like to get into the profession, and what are the most important things to do as you get into the field. There are so many things to think about, so many considerations that it can be hard to think of a simple answer to ‘what is project management like?’ But one answer we fall back on often is that Project Management is about: Saying what you are going to do Do what you said you did, Say what you did   We of course didn’t come up with that, but it so accurately describes the life of PM that we thought we’d make a podcast of it and go into the details. Join us as we talk about Say-Do-Say paradigm of project communication   JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

060 - Say-Do-Say: Fundamentals of Project Communication

Project Management can be tough - full of stress, emotion, passion and… more stress. You, your team and your stakeholders are trying to make big changes happen in the intense pressure cooker that is a project. And if you’ve been around long enough you will know that tears sometimes happen in the workplace. But how do we handle that - if we work with someone and they shed tears, or if it’s us? In this episode, we get real and honest about tears in the workplace - that it’s not a sign of weakness, and talk about how to handle it. And how NOT to handle it.  JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

059 - Crying Happens

Many of us are suddenly finding that we - and our teams - are working remotely from home. While this is normal for a lot of our workforce, it can represent a very big change for a lot of teams. How do we stay focused and stay productive - and help our team stay focused as well? And how do we do that in a way that keeps us all sane?  In this webinar, Kate and Kim talk through this process from how to setup a productive workspace from home, what tools you can use to optimize collaboration to how to treat ourselves and our team with compassion and help keep them motivated.    Get the webinar video! If you want to see the webinar with video, you can do so by registering on this page: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/3115849828526/WN_YlN8JVMBT_S5fwqh_rhogA JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

058 - Shut-in but not Shut-down: Managing Projects and Teams from Home

Projects are about change - but what are you doing to manage that change in your project? Fortunately, there’s an entire field of practice to make changes stick - Organizational Change Management Today our guest walks us through the Prosci ADKAR model for implementing change - one of the most well known and popular methodologies for managing change.  OUR AMAZING GUEST AND PM HAPPY HOUR MEMBER Kornelia Homewood, Kori for short, is passionate about all things project management. She is a certified PMP, Professional Scrum Master (PSM), and most recently a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. She has a Masters of Science in Project Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a portfolio leading diverse projects spanning multiple industries including – Higher Education, EdTech, FinTech, and IT. Her current role is that of a Project and Portfolio Management Consultant with Kolme Group. When she is not heads down on a project, you’ll find Kori indulging in her favorite hobby – all things yarn! Knitting, crocheting, spinning and weaving.  Find out more about Kori on her Linked in Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/korneliahomewood/  Read more about Prosci here: https://www.prosci.com/  And to find out more about ADKAR, check out Jeffrey M. Hiatt’s book: ADKAR: A model for change in business, government, and our community JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

057 - ADKAR: It’s not a trap! Change Management can save your mission

Whether we realize it or not,  we all have bias in the way we think about things. Maybe you have a bias to be overly optimistic in your estimates, or under estimate the impact of risks. Planning fallacy, illusion of control, confirmation bias - the list goes on of different ways bias can mis-shape our perceptions and our decisions   This week’s amazing guest, Jennifer Chandler, brings her depth of experience as a project manager and expertise in organizational leadership to help us understand bias and how to manage it   OUR AMAZING GUEST! This week’s guest, Jennifer Chandler, received her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute in 2008, even though she had been managing projects for decades before that. She managed information technology projects for federal agencies (e.g., the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U. S. Secret Service; the U. S. Navy; and the U. S. Army), international corporations (e.g., Motorola), and for national not-for-profit professional associations (e.g., the Association of American Medical Colleges). She has also managed and mentored teams of project managers as well as one-on-one mentoring of project managers.  She has also conducted assessments of other organizations' project management practices and developed curriculum and taught project management in organizations. JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour

056 Don't buy the bias! Managing bias in project management

Hiya listeners, in this episode we share what we’ve been up to and why we’ve been a bit quiet, some amazing PDU stats and share some things that we’re thankful for.  Cheers! And thanks to our amazing listeners   JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

055 - A slice of Thankfulness from Kate and Kim

For this episode the tables are turned - Kate and Kim get interviewed! Arizona State University student Krystal Ebadi contacted us and asked if she could interview us for her PM class about the realities of studying PM and getting a job. Of course we said yes! And Krystal let us share that interview with our listeners. Thanks Krystal! Join us as we talk about studying project management in a University, how to prepare to get a PM job, and how to break into the field. This episode covers some of our most frequent listener questions ABOUT OUR AMAZING GUEST KRYSTAL EBADI Krystal Ebadi is currently a junior at Arizona State University (Go sun devils!!!!!!) She is majoring in organizational leadership project management, and aspires to become a future Project Manager APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE! Kim was getting his house painted on recording day (OOPS!) and there's a bit of noise in the background. Sorry! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

054 - How to be a Project Manager: Kate and Kim get interviewed by a PM student about breaking into the field

This episode we talk with one of our amazing listeners, Josh Mildren, who shares his story about how he became a project manager - or rather, how he realized he was a project manager all along. Like a lot of our Happy Hour listeners, Josh was looking for new ways to address challenges his organization was struggling with, and found that a pragmatic approach using Project Management principles has a huge impact - so much so, that it propelled him to employee of the year! Congrats Josh!  Join us as Josh shares his journey - one that we think a lot of Happy Hour listeners can identify with! We'll talk about how to recognize how and when to leverage Project Management disciplines in your job - and how to recognize if you are, actually, a Project Manager even if that's not your official job title. ABOUT OUR AMAZING GUEST JOSH MILDREN Josh Mildren has been working in helpdesk services for 15 years and has been a Client Onboarding Engineer for the past 2 and half years with Dataprise out of Rockville MD. Josh has taken his experience with helpdesk support, client services and documentation to provide new client information and expectations of support services to his company, while setting up managed solutions and monitoring support services for their new clients. In order to ensure our clients have a smooth transition, Josh trains both his TEC staff and the client on submitting issues, reports and escalations and answer questions all while trying to meet Go-Live dates for support.     JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

053 - What if I told you that you were a PM all along?

This episode we talk about that make-or-break moment in project closing: handing over your project deliverables. If you plan your project right, this can be a moment of victory for your team, your stakeholders, and for yourself. But if you don’t plan for it, handover can become a never ending death march to nowhere. Kate and Kim talk about how to setup this key transition for success, and talk about some pitfalls you are going to want to avoid! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership  STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

052 - Who owns this baby when I’m done? Planning for deliverables handover

We love our listeners, and we love to answer your questions! In fact,  this episode comes straight from a call for help we received from one of our listeners. She shared with us that her manager told her that she was “too nice” with her project team, and asked us for help in how to deal with this ambiguous feedback.  Most of us have received ambiguous feedback like this. “You need to be tougher,”  “you are too abrupt,” “You need to present better to executives,” or something else like that. But how do you turn that vague feedback into action, and gain confidence back?  In this episode Kate shares her personal experience with some recent “inactionable” feedback she received, and shares how she worked through that feedback to achieve a positive outcome.  JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

051 - They told me I'm "Too Nice?!" Dealing with inactionable feedback

Ever have a project that costs money? Well, this podcast is for you! In this episode, Kate and Kim give you the quick and dirty rundown of basic project financials - not just within your project, but how money gets to your project, and how your finance team may view those financials. In a study Kim’s company did at PMO symposium, they found that tracking project financials correlated with success by every measure of project success - scope, schedule budget (obviously), resource management, customer satisfaction and ability to get the project done. So, financials are important! Check out Kim’s webinar recording here: https://kolmegroup.com/surveyresults/ JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

050 - Project Financials 101: A quick and dirty overview of how money affects projects

Communication is a critical part of a Project Manager’s job, and perhaps no aspect of comms is more important than ensuring that what is communicated is correct and truthful. But when someone is not being truthful - to themselves or others - how do you call that out? Or, as we say, how do you “call bullsh!t” on someone without it wrecking your relationship or the support you need from that stakeholder? This episode Kate and Kim get really, really real about calling out BS when you see it - why it’s our jobs as PMs to do it, how to do it and, where possible, how to do it in a way that ends up being positive for everyone. Well, as much as possible, anyway. And, yup, we do talk a bit of B.S. in this episode! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

049 - How to Call BS without getting Sh#t upon

Many Project Managers are on a trajectory that takes them from a more technical or tactical focus to a more leadership focus in their career, possibly transitioning from Project Management eventually to the Board Room. But how do you do that? How do you make the transition from being known for technical execution to strategic leadership? Well, one of the main things to consider is how you brand yourself. To help us learn about personal branding and growing from a tactical role to a strategic one is our special guest on this episode, Sonia Mundra. Sonia has successfully made this transition, and gives us some amazing coaching to help us grow into leadership  as well! OUR AMAZING GUEST, SONIA MUNDRA Our guest, Sonia Mundra is the President of Chenega Analytic Business Solutions (Chenega Analytic), an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) and Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB).  Ms. Mundra helps federal and commercial agencies implement records and IT solutions. She has served in a variety of operational, financial and executive roles at Chenega.  In addition to leading Chenega Analytic, Ms. Mundra dedicates a significant amount of time to volunteer associations and activities which help educate and empower the regional technology community. She has spoken for various organizations, including CompTIA, ISACA, PMI, National Contract Management Association (NCMA), and Virginia Society of CPAs (VSCPA). Ms. Mundra is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Project Management Professional (PMP). JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

048 - Brand Yourself with Sonia Mundra

PM Happy Hour is the place for frank and honest discussion about real world issues in project management. We do it in a way that’s not too dry, though it may get a bit salty from time to time. Each episode, your hosts Kim Essendrup and Kate Anderson we will cover a problem faced in project management today, and share practical advice, real-life examples and the occasional project horror story. Not only that, but every podcast is also an online class! Our host is a PMI Registered Education Provider, who has structured each podcast as an easy-to-listen-to lesson. To get credit, go to our web site at PMHappyHour.com, purchase your class, take the test (based on the content from our podcast) and you get your PDU certificate instantly!

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Project Management Happy Hour

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