Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

The inclusion of Agile into the PMBOK Guide, gives us an indication of how Agile is changing the world of project management.

David Gibson joins the team in the studio to talk about his experience in strategic planning, customer engagement, business development, and being the program manager for the Pentagon’s MRAP, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle.

Tune in now for our most intriguing episode yet. Dr. David Bray joins the crew to discuss his career leading up to becoming the CIO of the US Federal Communications Commission. He also shares his philosophy on "change agents" and how to empower the edge.

Louis Alderman and the team focus on the 6th Edition of the PMBOK Guide and discuss the recent exposure draft and how it will impact the PMP Certification Exam in the future. Tune in for the latest and greatest.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● NEAL WHITTEN NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s a great opportunity to talk about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager, or maybe you’re working toward one of your certifications.  We want to help spark your imagination, light a fire under you, and encourage you along the way.  And we do that by talking about issues and trends in the field and hearing from those in the trenches who are doing the job of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are two guys who have been in the trenches.  They know what it takes to succeed.  They are here to help you succeed.  Athey are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And guys, here we are again.  And we’re going to be joined by another expert in just a moment.  But I’ve got to confess to you I’m a little antsy to be outside right now.  We’ve turned the corner into spring.  There’s just something about the freshness of everything in this season, something in the air that... BILL YATES:  Nick, it’s called pollen. NICK WALKER:  I wondered what that was.  Yeah.  Yeah, the tree pollen, it gets me.  But the brightness, the newness of the season kind of makes up for the sneezing almost.  So spring is here.  It’s nice to have that.  But I’m really looking forward to hearing from our guest today.  Neal Whitten is a project management professional.  He’s a speaker.  He’s a trainer, a consultant, and a mentor to those who are up-and-coming in the field of project management.  His newest book is called “The Gift of Wisdom:  Lessons for a Lifetime.”  Neal, welcome to Manage This. NEAL WHITTEN:  Well, thank you.  I’m honored to be here. NICK WALKER:  It’s always good to kind of hear a little bit about folks’ backgrounds before we kind of delve into everything.  Tell us a little bit about kind of where you’ve been. NEAL WHITTEN:  Okay.  So we’re going to start by putting the audience to sleep.  I have a degree in electrical engineering.  Hired on at IBM as a software engineer and took early retirement there, and have been on my own for over 20 years, doing my own thing, but all related to project management. NICK WALKER:  A lot of our listeners may already be familiar with you, your work on Velociteach.com.  You’ve created a lot of content for us.  You’re kind of another resident expert, really. NEAL WHITTEN:  Well, this is absolutely true.  You know what, we all are legends in our own mind, let’s just put it that way. BILL YATES:  Well, I’ve got to jump in on that. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, Bill. BILL YATES:  This is Bill.  It’s interesting, the studio that we’re in, Neal has been in this studio to produce about close to a dozen eLearning courses for us now.  And one of the things I love about the perspective of Neal, I mean, you hear it.  He was with IBM for 25 years.  He’s an electrical engineer.  Yet so many of the topics that are passion points for him have to do with soft skill, their leadership, their how to be strategic and think big picture.  And so we’re privileged and honored to be partnering with Neal. NICK WALKER:  And you trained, Neal, in a lot of environments, a lot of different various organizations.  What common thread do you find in all of these organizations? NEAL WHITTEN:  I’ve trained in every environment that I can imagine, frankly.  Let me give you an example of something that happened not long ago which is indicative of what a lot of us trainers face.  So I get a phone call from a potential client.  Client had been referenced to the training that I do and said, “Neal, I’m interested in you coming out and giving us some training, and it’s typically in leadership types of things.  But I have a problem, and I need your help on it, and this is the problem.  We’ve had a lot of trainers come out, trainers just like you.  And when they’re through training, they get good evaluations.  People like it.

PMI recently introduced the Talent Triangle. In this episode, the team breaks down the three sides of the triangle and explains why they are so important to you, your PDUs and your organization.

The team interviews Mike Hayes about his role in the Olympic Games, and he shares some incredible stories about the challenges he faced to meet the strict deadline of the lighting of the torch. Hayes also discusses the Sharepoint update at the CDC. He has an extensive background in managing projects and helping others become project managers.

Agile and Waterfall- which one is better? Peter Saddington discusses his experience with consulting organizations who are implementing Agile.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● CELESTE CLANCY  NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers, for project managers.  It’s a chance for us to get together every couple of weeks and have a conversation about what matters to you as a professional project manager.  We’ll cover subjects such as project management certification, doing the job of project management; and we’ll get inside the brains of some of the leaders in the industry and maybe hear your stories.  I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are our resident experts, who have been in the trenches and stood on the mountaintops.  They are the project managers who mentor other project managers and those working toward that title, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. Andy and Bill, we have a lot to cover today.  We’ll get to some certification subjects in just a bit.  But let’s start off by talking philosophy.  It’s about the WBS, the work breakdown structure that organizes a team’s work into manageable sections.  There are a couple of different philosophies about this subject when it comes to project management.  Andy, what are those? ANDY CROWE:  Well, you know, a couple of the approaches that we see out there sort of follow the overall approaches in project management.  It’s either top-down or bottom-up.  And so really a lot of the top-down crowd, which you might consider to be Waterfall, SDLC, sort of a traditional approach, they’re really going to favor the WBS.  They’re going to favor looking at it, decomposing the scope, breaking it down, getting to the work packages.  And we’ll talk more about that and explore that. The Agile community doesn’t really do this.  So you’re not going to see a WBS chart on the wall of an Agile team.  Agile takes a different approach.  They have a more dynamic approach.  So the goal with the WBS is to get the work documented and really understood upfront.  And Agile believes that maybe it’s not always better to do that.  So we’re going to be talking to the traditional crowd.  We are going to have some things to say to the Agile community next week, I think.  But this week is more for the traditional SDLC crowd. NICK WALKER:  All right.  Bill, tell us a little bit about your experience in all of this.  Do you have a take on this? BILL YATES:  Yeah, absolutely.  The work breakdown structure, there are some different names.  Andy, when you hear WBS, are there some other things that you think of?  I’ve heard one, I know Louis likes to refer to it as “work bite sizes.” ANDY CROWE:  Hah, I like that. BILL YATES:  There are some other uses for that abbreviation. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. BILL YATES:  And they’re making some up there.  There are – it’s very interesting when we talk about the WBS.  One of the common fallacies that I think we’ve all seen is people having confusion between, okay, what’s on the work breakdown structure and what’s on the schedule? ANDY CROWE:  Right, where does one end and the next one begin, sure, sure, sure. BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah.  Or I’ve seen cases or heard conversations with project managers where I think there’s a complete misunderstanding of which is which, what goes where.  And so simplicity, if you think about a work breakdown structure as being a visual graph that helps us see what are the outputs, what are the things that we’re going to produce with this project, then that’s a great way to differentiate that from the schedule.  So simplifying a work breakdown structure focuses on the “what.”  What is it that I’m going to produce?  What are the deliverables?  Andy, I remember when I was studying for the PMP exam, one of the things, an analogy that was helpful was “noun versus verb.” ANDY CROWE:  Right. BILL YATES:  So the nouns are on the WBS. ANDY CROWE:  Right. BILL YATES:  This is the outcome of all of our actions in our work.  Whereas the schedule of best practice is to take those nouns, those deliverables that we’ll produce that are on the WB...

Nobody can know everything for the exam. So, what do you do when you just have to guess at an answer? Andy Crowe and Bill Yates discuss their strategy for guessing on the exam. A caller shares her story of how she prepared for the PMP exam.