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, some of the resources that were out there either talked down to you, or they explained things that, well, yeah, if you already understood them, that would help.  And if you didn’t understand, it didn’t help at all.  So I was trying to bridge that gap. Comparison to Other PMP Exam Textbooks WENDY GROUNDS:  What else about your book makes it different from other PMP textbooks? ANDY CROWE:  I think a lot of it is the voice we use and the way we try and relate back to the work that project managers are doing.  So there aren’t a ton of assumptions in there necessarily.  We try and explain concepts from the ground up.  A lot of illustrations, a lot of diagrams, a lot of examples.  And then a whole ton of questions.  I don’t know if any other resource has that many sample practice questions built in. BILL YATES:  One of the things that I think gives you a unique voice with the book is it includes both predictive and adaptive.  And I think when PMI expanded the test to include all the agile content, for us it was like, ooh, this is a great opportunity.  We’ve already written a lot of content.  You had the PMI ACP book already. And then I think it just added to the value of your book because then you added, gosh, dozens and dozens of pages to go into agile content, which again had the same mindset of this is how it makes sense to me.  This has been my experience. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  And you know, it was – that was a weird time in the industry because you had a lot of companies trying to suddenly brand themselves as agile experts.  And some of them had no idea, and some of them were trying hard to do agile through this waterfall or predictive lens.  So it was just a really interesting time with a lot of chaos.  And it was fun to try and step in and bring some order and some reason to that. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And I would say you brought simplicity to it. You know, being able to take a difficult concept, a complex concept, and bring simplicity to it.  And I think for many it’s just very hard to think, okay, predictive versus adaptive.  They’re very different.  But how can I understand them both?  ANDY CROWE:  Thanks.  You’ve not the first person to call me “simple.”  No, the two are in opposition to each other to a large degree, and they’re trying to accomplish the same thing through not necessarily opposite means, but certainly different. BILL YATES:  Yeah, very different. Defining Success WENDY GROUNDS:  Andy, with your book, what defines success? ANDY CROWE:  Number of units sold.  No.  I’m kidding.  Although, you know, it is nice to have some success in the market.  But to me the real success comes through the number of people who use it successfully, the number of people who pass.  And this is the only job in my life that I’ve ever had where people write thank-you notes.  So we’ll regularly get notes from people because this makes a difference in their career, makes a difference in their life.  And so that is wonderful, to get those.  That never gets old.  I read every one.  I try and response to every one I get. That to me defines success. Lessons Learned Starting Velociteach WENDY GROUNDS:  People are often afraid to step out and take a risk, to do that career change, and especially going alone in a new business.  Can you tell us a bit about starting Velociteach and your lessons learned in that process? ANDY CROWE:  That’s a big question, Wendy.  I understand that fear of taking a leap of faith.  You know, I had done training, a good bit of training at the very beginning of my career, and I loved it.  I loved training.  And what I loved about it was seeing the light bulb come on.  I used to teach for the federal government.  And this goes way back into the late ‘80s.  But I loved seeing the light bulbs come on.  I loved seeing people understand concepts and trying to help lead them along a path.  So that was a natural transition for me.  I absolutely loved project management.  I had been doing it. And I had been growing as a project manager, promoted up, director of project management for a public company.  And it was a nice marriage of the two.  But it was still a terrifying thing to do, and to jump out and make that change.  So I definitely understand it. Lessons learned?  I wish I had done it earlier, honestly.  I think, you know, it was something that I’ve never looked back and said, oh, this was a career mistake; or, wow, I shouldn’t have done this.  Not every venture like that works.  This one did.  And it was a real delight. Challenges that PMs are Facing Today BILL YATES:  Andy, when you look at project managers and the role of the project manager, what are the biggest challenges that PMs are facing today? ANDY CROWE:  You know, I’ve said for years it’s a tough gig.  Being a project manager is tough because you’re caught in a vise of organization expectations, customer expectations.  And sometimes they’re unreasonable on both sides, and they all pinch in on the PM.  So the PM’s got to try and figure out how to make this work and how to broker some kind of satisfaction among all the parties.  And of course you’ve got the team, as well.  And so a lot of times if the PM is sort of a pleaser personality, he or she is trying to make the customer happy, and the team gets creamed by having to work too hard, having to put in too much.  They’re redlining all the time.  It’s a difficult job. And then you’ve got a lot of organizations are mandating a specific approach that may or may not work well for that project.  So some organizations are purely predictive, some organizations are pure agile, and there’s really almost no appeal or no discussion, even though that may not be tailored just right to this particular project.  Again, the PM’s got to figure out how to make that work.  Some people are better at that naturally than others.  But I think there’s a lot of challenges out there. And, you know,