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Project Management Happy Hour

Kim Essendrup and Kate Anderson

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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 Pr ...
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AUDIO QUALITY NOTICE! Apologies, we have a little static on one of the mics during our recording - sorry for the occasional audio issue. As a project manager, an organizational structure that will have a big impact on your life is the PMO. But if you aren’t used to working with a PMO, what should you expect? Are they going to make your life and pro…
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In this episode, Kat and Kim talk to Erik Rueter about design thinking in our projects. What’s design thinking, you may be thinking? Design thinking is a methodology that focuses on the end users of a system when we are problem solving. Erik will share 5 different design thinking methods for understanding user needs in a way that not only helps you…
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Although an essential part of our project-driven world, most project leaders didn’t set out to be one. For many of us, our first steps into project leadership won’t come with an official title. So, if we are not ‘officially’ project managers, how are we supposed to lead the project? There are a lot of answers to this question, but one approach all …
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For the first time, Kate and Kim find an Agilist brave enough to join them on the podcast to talk about some really hard questions about working Agile vs Waterfall. Let’s get it on! We ask the questions that PM’s want to ask - frustrated, annoyed PM’s who are told to work “agile” by people who maybe don’t even understand Agile - or Waterfall, for t…
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Project Management is weird. You can have the same job title and be a very tactical execution-minded project manager - which is the way most of us start. Or you can be a strategic part of the leadership team, recognized for your ability to help executives make their vision a reality. So, how do you develop yourself from tactical implementer to stra…
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Meetings. Love them or hate them, they are core to what we do as project leaders. We need to pull people together (real or virtually) to discuss, plan, check-in, and get things done. But as we know, when we get people together, sometimes their misbehaviors - “goblins” - tag along, too! Being able to manage effective meetings can make or break us as…
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“What percent done are you?” Status reporting is a core skill (and responsibility) of project managers. It is an opportunity for you to check in with your team, and to build rapport and engagement with stakeholders. But it’s also something we often take for granted. In this episode, Kate and Kim talk about how to approach status reporting whether y…
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Being a project manager is tough. You are assigned a team of people who may never have with each other (or you) before, and you need to lead them to accomplish a task, solve a problem, or create a new deliverable. And by definition, this is a unique task - so it hasn’t been done before, at least not in this way, for these stakeholders. In among the…
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It can be hard getting a project started correctly: getting the right executive and stakeholder sponsorship and support, getting them all to agree on the scope and approach, getting funding, approvals, and all the other things required to get a project off the ground. You negotiate with other departments and get committed resource assignments and t…
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Projects are hard. And a lot of them - maybe most of them - fail to live up to their expectations. Missed timelines, quality issues, budget overages, customer dissatisfaction - it seems sometimes like projects miss the mark more often than they hit it. But why is that? What can we learn from all those past projects that can help us make future proj…
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Creative decision making is key to what we do in all our projects. According to FourSight, there are 4 distinct voices in the decision making process. Do you have these voices in the room when you make decisions? Do you know when you need all 4 voices - or only a couple specific ones? We are joined today by Teresa Lawrence who gave one of the most …
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“I know the world is ending, but do you have wifi here?” Sounds funny, but it’s deadly serious. Natural disasters impact critical infrastructure that we depend on every day: shelter, fresh water, food distribution, and power. These are the ones we think about. But what about communication? How do relief agencies, police, fire, and government coordi…
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Decisions make or break your project - starting with the decision of whether or not to even do your project. Beyond that, we have planned decisions / phase gates and ad-hoc decisions that happen throughout the entire life of our project. And if you’ve been around long enough, you know that one bad decision can sink your whole project - or at least …
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Yeah! One of our favorite guests, Tim Creasey, returns! This time we are talking about what happens if you realize, too late in the game, that you really didn’t consider Change Management enough in your planning cycle. It’s such a universal experience of a project manager to not have change management, and so many of us end up in these situations w…
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As a project manager, the time you get with an executive sponsor is critical: you don’t get much of it and you cannot blow it! For many of our listeners, you may be new to executive meetings. But, how do you get the most out of these meetings and give a good impression so you can get the confidence of your executive sponsors? It’s something we ALL …
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Tech startups drive the technology around us, and a good bit of the economy. They use creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit to solve problems and build the world of tomorrow. But how do they do that? Is it really like the “Shark Tank” or “Dragon’s Den” tv shows? Today we are joined by a real-life tech founder who has successfully built h…
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When the first Covid vaccinations were released, massive vaccination sites were launched, seemingly overnight, to vaccinate millions of people. If you volunteered or were vaccinated at one of these sites, you may have witnessed how huge, sophisticated and well run these sites were. But how did they do that? How (and who) planned, organized, stood u…
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This episode is based on feedback we’ve had from our member 1:1 coaching sessions, one of the benefits we provide our PM Happy Hour members. Many PM’s find themselves in a position where they are the first project manager in their organization. Whether you are a newbie or an experienced pro, this will be a challenge. The organization probably has a…
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OK, originally this was going to be an April Fool’s goof podcast, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and maybe a bit educational. But, nope, it’s not your usual PMHH episode, and DEFINITELY not your typical PM podcast. So, if you are looking for something serious and academic, this episode is not the one for you. Kate will be your dungeon master …
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PMs are accountable for project success. As such, we are keenly aware when things are failing! And because most PM’s are process and goal oriented, we can think of a lot of ways to improve an organization. But how do you propose a change in a way that gets support - instead of damnation? If you don’t do it right, pitching a change can sound a lot l…
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Wouldn’t it be cool if everyone followed all the processes we built? If everyone on our team followed the PMBOK or SCRUM methodologies perfectly every single time and every estimate we ever received was perfectly accurate? Of course that doesn’t happen. But did you ever stop to think - why? Well, our guest today has. Dr. Josh Ramirez has combed the…
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“I am in way over my head.” “I have no business doing this job” “I am totally not worthy of this role” “There is no way I’m qualified to do this” Have you ever told this to yourself? You may be infected with Imposter Syndrome! That’s OK - all highly capable people, especially project managers, find themselves with this affliction at one time or ano…
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The same way sports teams have coaches to help optimize their performance, organizations can engage PM coaches to help their project management team win. In this episode, we are joined by Heather Gates, a PM coach who has worked to help develop project managers across many organizations. In this episode, Heather shares a few of her top coaching tip…
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Did you ever watch the credits at the end of a movie and think, “wow, that’s a lot of people?” You’re right. Hundreds or thousands of people engaged to deliver a massive, multi-million dollar project that is a feature film. How do they do that? Our guest today walks us through the project behind a feature film: how do they plan a movie? How do they…
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We are joined again by one of our favorite guests, Tim Creasey, Organizational Change Wizard. This time he shares 12 different methods for creating better alignment with your team and your stakeholders. In this first part of a 2 part episode, we share the first 6 of these hacks to help get two people on the same page. 7- Marathon Measures 8- Contex…
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