Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Hear about an award winning project to repurpose a 125-year old train station into an aquarium. A project that includes designing destinations and creating animal habitats that tell lasting stories.

The 2020 national elections proved to be divisive and controversial. Join us as we take a look behind the scenes with Gabriel Sterling, who became the face of Georgia elections. Gabriel publicly debunked election conspiracy theories and confronted the provocation of threats against election workers. We talk with Gabriel about people, processes, and technology as he describes the unique challenges he faced as the project manager in the role of Voting System Implementation Manager. He explains the request for proposal (RFP), procurement process, and negotiations on a project that aimed to launch the largest implementation of a technology platform for elections in the history of the United States.

As leaders we should bring clarity of purpose into our teams in times of crisis. Hear how to take action when things look overwhelming, stay grounded during crisis, and lead through tragedy. In times of crisis, it’s not the title you have but what you do.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Are you learning project management from the school of hard knocks? Listen in for some pragmatic, practice-based insights into project leadership. Hear advice about psychological safety, building appreciation, organizational learning, risk analysis and much more. Tips to boost your project success and encourage self-managing, high-performing teams. Table of Contents 01:18 … Meet Kiron04:53 … Psychological Safety07:15 … Soliciting Feedback09:25 … Building in Appreciation11:22 … An Appreciation Board13:32 … Accountability from Within14:31 … Embedded Continuous Improvement15:04 … Unconscious Yet Effective Delegation16:54 … Translating Lessons Learned into Organizational Learning18:12 … Information Radiators for Lessons Learned19:25 … Psychologically Safe Evidence Based Retrospectives21:50 … Leader Goes First22:57 … Retrospect on the Retrospectives24:00 … When Someone Leaves the Project25:45 … Building Bridges with Functional Managers27:02 … Risk Management27:57 … Risk Management as Insurance30:16 … Delphi Technique on Qualitative Risk Analysis31:54 … Words of Advice32:54 … Get in Touch with Kiron34:01 … Closing KIRON BONDALE: When I started my career in project management, I was obsessed with the process side of it, the practices, the tools, the techniques of project management.  I wanted to build the world’s greatest schedule.  I ignored the people.  And I forgot that it’s people that deliver project outcomes, not the processes, not the practices. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Listeners, remember if you’re claiming PDUs, check out our website for the instructions for the new procedure.  I am Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates. BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy. WENDY GROUNDS:  Good morning, Bill. BILL YATES:  Good morning to you. WENDY GROUNDS:  Today we’re very excited to have Kiron Bondale joining us by Skype.  Kiron is a senior consultant for World Class Productivity,and he’s worked in the project management domain for over 25 years.  He is also an active member of PMI and has served as a volunteer director on the board of PMI Lakeshore Chapter for six years.  And Bill, you’re going to tell us about his book. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  I really enjoyed Kiron’s book.  It’s called “Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice.”  He’s a prolific writer.  He’s been blogging for years.  And he’ll describe what inspired him to write this book.  But this book is really practical, filled with advice for project managers, very topical.  We’re going to poke into some of the examples, but I really encourage people to check it out.  Meet Kiron WENDY GROUNDS:  Kiron, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest. KIRON BONDALE:  Thank you for giving me the opportunity.  I really appreciate it. WENDY GROUNDS:  I want to ask you first, why did you write the  book, and what was your thought behind this book? KIRON BONDALE:  Yes.  It really was prompted by a challenge my father had given me almost two decades ago now, where when I told him I was thinking about starting a blog, and he looked at me, and he kind of said, you know, blogs are for amateurs.  And this is in the early days, when there weren’t a whole lot of people in the blogosphere.  But he kind of said, you know, forget about these 400, 500-word things.  If you want to be serious, write a book. And my father and I, we disagreed on a variety of topics over the time we spent together.  But that kind of challenge stayed in the back of my head all of these years.  And when I got to roughly about 500 articles in the blog, I started thinking, you know, rather than having to create something from scratch, there’s enough good content there that it probably begs the question, could I not collate it, curate it, create a book from it?  And having some free time on my hands over the Christmas holidays last year,

Pioneering the development of human monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for viral diseases, in 2019 the Crowe Lab did a simulated pandemic outbreak and developed a record breaking rapid antibody discovery platform. Dr. James E. Crowe, Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center shares how in 2020, as they were getting ready to do another simulation, right in the middle of their preparations COVID happened. Hear the fascinating story of how his team pivoted to launch a project with no reagents, no information, and no samples.  Table of Contents 01:37 … Meet James03:12 … What is an Antibody?04:17 … Monoclonal Antibodies06:44 … The Human Immunome Project09:25 … Secrets in our Bloodstream12:02 … COVID Response15:55 … Getting the Team to Pivot20:02 … Concerning Vaccine Hesitancy26:25 … Decision Analysis and Risks28:06 … Deciding on Intellectual Property34:02 … Formal Project Management in the Lab36:35 … After Action Reviews38:01 … Project Management Processes and Practices42:45 … Get in Touch with James43:50 … Closing JAMES CROWE: I like the complexity of it, and I like working with project managers because they like seeing the complexity.  And the bottom line is getting things done in a complex environment.  That’s getting stuff out the other end and not being discouraged by that, but enjoying the complexity. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast for project managers by project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds; and, as always, here in the studio with me is Bill Yates. Listeners remember if you’re claiming PDUs for our podcast, as well as for our courses, check out our website. Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions.  We are so glad you’re joining us today.  We have a special guest.  This is Dr. James Crowe, and he’s a physician scientist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  He’s the director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center and the Ann Scott Carell Chair.  He’s a Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology. BILL YATES:  Dr. Crowe has pioneered development of human monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for viral diseases.  He’s going to describe to us what that means.  I think we’ve all heard about antibodies lately.  But he can describe it from a science perspective.  And they’d done a lot of work on antibodies prior to the COVID pandemic.  But when the pandemic hit, his team pivoted, and we’ll talk with him about that.  In fact, the Crowe team won an award in December 2020.  They were recognized for their work on COVID antibody research, and that’s a fantastic award that recognizes the achievement that they’ve had in that field. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  So he gives some great project management advice in this podcast.  It’s really interesting to hear his perspective.  And also something we ask James is why we’re still debating the social good and the necessity of vaccines.  And he touches on that, as well.  So let’s talk to James.  Hi, Dr. Crowe.  Thank you so much for joining us today. Meet James JAMES CROWE:  Yeah, thanks for having me. WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re just so excited to talk with you today, to clarify some issues about vaccines and about immunization.  And I think you’re just the right person to talk to.  But I want to just go back a little bit and find out what is your mission as a scientist in the vaccine area?  How did you get started in this?  And what really is your goal? JAMES CROWE:  Well, I trained originally as a pediatrician, and ultimately worked in various places around the world.  I traveled in Papua New Guinea and Sub-Saharan Africa and various exotic places, thinking that I might spend my life trying to make the world a better a better place for children who are in challenging situations.  And when you’re there, you see infectious diseases as a big part of the challenge.  Ultimately I trained as an infectious disease specialist to try to work on prevention of disease, infectious diseases,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. For project managers who are ready to up their game with risk management, Prasad Kodukula clarifies Next-Generation Project Risk Management and talks us through six specific risk response tools that will help you manage risks more effectively. Table of Contents 02:03 … Meet Prasad03:19 … Next Generation Project Risk Management09:12 … Tool 1: Ambiguity Risks12:49 … Tool 2: Emergent Risks14:07 … Dealing with Unknown Unknowns18:40 … Tool 3: Opportunities23:07 … Tool 4: Integration of Cost and Schedule Risks24:34 … Communicating Risks to Upper Management28:59 … Tool 5: Adaptive Technique – Iterative and Incremental methods32:02 … Tool 6: Risk Response Strategies35:14 … Get in Touch with Prasad35:44 … Closing Prasad Kodukula:  We’ve got to break down those silos so that we can communicate more freely, more quickly across different functions because when we are talking about resiliency, we want to make sure that we could put together a cross-functional team very quickly that could work cohesively together. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Listeners you can still claim your free PDUs.  The steps to submit a PDU for our podcast, as well as for our InSite courses to PMI, has changed.  Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions.  Make sure not to use the autofill, but type in “Velociteach” and the title when you are submitting your PDUs.  We do apologize for the inconvenience. I am Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  Bill, today we’re talking with Prasad Kodukula.  He is a PMI Fellow, a PMI advisor, thought leader, coach, author, and entrepreneur with more than 35 years of experience. BILL YATES:  Yeah, I think people will quickly figure out Prasad is an overachiever. WENDY GROUNDS:  Absolutely. BILL YATES:  He’s taken three big awards with PMI:  the 2010 Distinguished Contribution Award, the 2016 Eric Jenett Project Management Excellence Award, the 2020 PMI Fellow Award.  So this guy is very well decorated. WENDY GROUNDS:  He is also a self-proclaimed global ambassador of project management.  He’s spoken on project management and innovation leadership in nearly 50 countries, and I enjoy talking to him about South Africa.  He goes there quite often.  Unfortunately, with COVID, he hasn’t been able to get there. BILL YATES:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  But we were able to talk a little bit about South Africa, which was really cool. BILL YATES:  Talk about home. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  So Prasad is going to talk with us today about one of the topics that’s of keen interest to him and certainly to us.  He’s going to look at risk management and describe six next-generation tools for risk management. WENDY GROUNDS:  Prasad.  Thank you so much for joining us. PRASAD KODUKULA:  Hello, Wendy.  Thank you for having me. Meet Prasad WENDY GROUNDS:  Prasad, with a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, you obviously did not set out in your career intending to become a project manager.  How did you discover that this was the path for you? PRASAD KODUKULA:  Well, that’s an interesting question.  You are right, Wendy.  I did not start to make a project manager in my career.  And it happens with a lot of people.  It happened to me by accident.  So I call myself an “accidental project manager.”  So I started as an R&D engineer, and within two or three years they asked me to manage projects.  I didn’t know anything about it.  I said sure.  Sounded like a pretty good idea, sounded like a nice title to have, so I became a project manager by sheer accident. BILL YATES:  That’s hilarious because, you know, you think, okay, here’s Prasad, an accidental project manager, which you’ve won three amazing awards with PMI.  You’re a PMI Fellow, which is really the feather on the top of the cap.  That’s an amazing award.

Hear about creating healthy Agile teams. Trust, healthy conflict, commitment, and peer-to-peer accountability build healthy teams. When you have “One Team” that is focused and stable, you are closer to producing winning results.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Projects are more successful when we play to the strengths of the team. Hear about a new technology platform for building high-performing and successful teams. Create a winning team culture by identifying the unique preference, proficiency, and personality that an individual brings to the table. Table of Contents 00:05 … New PDU Claim Process00:54 … Meet Darrin02:53 … Cloverleaf: How it all Began04:56 … Consistent Team Performance09:19 … Choosing the Right Tool for a Successful Team12:10 … When to Pivot your Plan14:39 … What can Cloverleaf do for a Project Team?17:53 … Partnering with Other Assessment Tools19:49 … After the Assessment: Getting Stuff Done24:09 … Tools for Team Members27:06 … Application for Traditional or Agile Methodology27:57 … Keeping Remote Teams Motivated31:25 … Being Authentic32:32 … “Corporate Bravery”33:45 … Get in Touch with Darrin34:53 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  New PDU Claim Process Just a little update about claiming your PDUs. The steps to submit a PDU for our podcast, as well as for our InSite courses to PMI, has changed. Our PDU claim page has been updated with the new instructions. Make sure not to use the auto-fill but type in Velociteach and the title, when you are submitting your PDUs. We do apologize for the inconvenience but thank you for listening and please contact us if you need any additional assistance. I’m Wendy Grounds; and as always, here in the studio with me is Bill Yates.  Please make sure to visit our website, Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to the show so you will never miss an episode.  While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating on iTunes or a comment on our website.  Or if you’d simply tell a friend, that would help us out, too.  Meet Darrin We like to share stories of interesting projects, and we like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things which can impact the world of project management.  And that brings me to today’s guest, Darrin Murriner.  He is the cofounder and CEO of Cloverleaf.me.  It’s a technology platform for building high-performing teams.  Prior to founding Cloverleaf, he managed large and complex teams at companies such as Arthur Andersen and Fifth Third Bank.  And he is the author of a book called “Corporate Bravery,” and he’s going to tell us a little bit more about that book later on.  But Bill, do you want to tell us a bit about Cloverleaf? BILL YATES:  Yeah.  We have had conversations and dedicated podcasts to talking about team building and talking about assessing strengths.  We’ll reference some of those later in the ‘cast, I’m sure.  But we know that successful teams lead to successful projects.  So any tools that we can put in the hands of our listeners that will make them better at equipping their teams and making them more effective, man, we’re excited about showing those. Someone brought to our attention this toolset called Cloverleaf.  And fortunately, we’ve got the CEO, Darrin, who’s going to talk with us about Cloverleaf.  It’s a teambuilding tool.  And you can take something like StrengthsFinder or Myers-Briggs or DISC or other assessments that you do on your team, and you have all this data, and then you need something to help you take those next steps.  So I think this conversation will give us some ideas. WENDY GROUNDS:  Right.  A thing to note, I just want to say to our listeners, is that we don’t receive any compensation for talking about Cloverleaf.  We just came across them.  Someone told us about them.  And we want to share that with our audience.  We’re not getting a free subscription to Cloverleaf for our team. BILL YATES:  We need to ask Darrin about that, yeah.  We’re not getting anything for this.  Again, this is just a toolset that we wanted to make people aware of. WENDY GROUNDS:  Right.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. How can practitioners incorporate sustainability and social value into their current practice? Karen Thompson and Nigel Williams are the co-creators of Responsible Project Management, an initiative that aims to accelerate achievement of sustainable development goals, encouraging responsibility in the context of projects and project management. PLEASE REFER TO OUR ‘CLAIM PDUS’ PAGE TO NOTE THE CHANGES TO THE PDU CLAIM PROCESS. Table of Contents 02:12 … The History of Responsible Project Management06:42 … Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility07:45 … Changing the Role of the Project Manager10:43 … Correctly Defining Sustainability12:24 … Who Might I be Hurting through This Work?16:38 … Questions to Ask as a Responsible Project Manager19:51 … When it’s Not about Success or Failure22:19 … How to Raise Awareness amongst Stakeholders24:48 … A Manifesto for Responsible Project Management29:40 … 2021 The Year of Responsible Project Management32:02 … Learn More about Responsible Project Management33:13 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  And we’d like to wish you a very happy New Year.  This is 2021, and we hope it’s going to be a good one. BILL YATES:  Oh, yes.  It’s got to be. WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s got to be better.  We like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things in the world of project management.  And that brings us to today’s guests.  Dr. Karen Thompson is a senior academic at Bournemouth University Business School in the U.K.  She’s a project professional turned innovative educator.who has done a lot of research and education in managing projects sustainably. And we have Dr. Nigel Williams, the Reader in Project Management and research lead at the University of Portsmouth.  Karen and Nigel co-lead the Responsible Project Management Initiative, which is aimed to encourage sustainability and social responsibility in an ethical manner by project managers. BILL YATES:  Yeah, sustainability is a topic that we’ve hit on a few times.  And I know just recently we interviewed Scott Berkun, and we focused on his book, “How Design Makes the World.”  Berkun talked about four questions in that book, and the fourth question:  Who might be hurt by your work, now or in the future?  This conversation that we’re going to have today just goes right in line with that.  I think some projects produce amazing things, could be a product or a service.  But we don’t really think about the fallout. We had conversations with Henk about the ocean cleanup project; right?  Episode 106.  Orbital space debris.  We talked with Dr. Heather about that problem in Episode 75.  We all want our cell phones to work.  We want to have GPS.  But what happens when the satellite dies? Sustainability is something that we’re passionate about.  This kind of takes it to another level.  It’s challenging to me as a project manager to think about, okay, in my day-to-day work, how can I be considering these questions?  So I’m excited about this conversation. WENDY GROUNDS: Not so long ago we spoke to Kaitlyn Bunker about the Islands Energy Program.  And that was also an incredible program where they’re really thinking about what is the good that we are bringing in our projects. And with that, let’s get talking to Karen and Nigel. The History of Responsible Project Management Karen, could you tell us a little bit about the history of Responsible Project Management, how you started it? KAREN THOMPSON:  Yes, certainly.  Well, how it started was way back in 2017 I’d just finished my Ph.D.  And one of the things that I uncovered while doing that were all the claims that project management research – there were criticisms around it not being relevant enough to practice.  So in 2017 I held a sort of networking event where ...

As the COVID pandemic began to unfold, staff at an Israeli hospital knew that clinical teams were going to be at high-risk and critically over-burdened.  The COVOD-19 Sprint project united doctors and developers to find creative technological solutions to the medical challenges of the pandemic.