Episode 20 – Scary Project Stories

Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● NEAL WHITTEN ● DR. STACY CAMPBELL ● MIKE MOSQUITO ● ALAN CLAYPOOL ● BOB MAHLER NICK WALKER: No, this is not a flashback to some old-time radio program like “The Shadow” or “War of the Worlds.” This is a special Halloween edition of Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. Every other week we get together to talk about what matters most to you as a professional project manager. We talk about getting certified, staying certified, and getting projects done. I’m your host, Nick Walker. And with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. Okay, guys. I think it’s obvious we’re doing something a little bit different today. Andy, would you kind of fill us in on the topic today? ANDY CROWE: We’re talking about project horror stories in honor of Halloween. It’s a spooky season. And I think – Bill and I were talking earlier about how you learn a lot more when things get scary on the project than you do when things go smoothly. But I’m most excited that we also – we have a lot of guests calling in, but we also have a very special guest here in the studio, Neal Whitten. Neal, welcome. NEAL WHITTEN: Thank you very much. I’m honored to be here. NICK WALKER: We must have treated you right last time, Neal, because you decided to come back and join us. BILL YATES: He came back. ANDY CROWE: It was the coffee cup. NEAL WHITTEN: It must have been that. I love this coffee. NICK WALKER: We’re looking forward to hearing your story here in just a little bit. But first let’s talk to a guest on the phone. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, we have Dr. Stacy Campbell as our first caller. Stacy is a friend of Velociteach. She’s been a professional consultant, a project manager. Now she is a professor in the business school at Kennesaw State University. All right, Stacy, thank you for being with us today. So we’re talking about project horror stories. What is yours? STACY CAMPBELL: Well, I don’t know if it’s a horror story. But it was scary when I was going through it. So this was when I was starting off. I was a young project manager. And I was working in D.C., working for the – our project was the U.S. Marshals. And they were implementing part of the PeopleSoft HR system. And specifically they were doing the module that tracked all the skills and certifications and training on these U.S. Marshals. So before I could even get started, I had to go through a background check. And I don’t know if anyone has ever done that, but the whole process of writing down all the people you’ve ever known and having them kind of vouch for you. So that whole part was scary. I knew that that was going to be – it was going to be an interesting project. But once I got onboard, and I started looking into it, I mean, I basically was in charge of gathering all the different – making sure that the database had all the different skills that the U.S. Marshals had. I mean, so in the past the only way to find out, if there was an emergency, and they had to deploy certain marshals because of their special karate skills, language skills, they would basically just do it by word of mouth. Like, oh, yeah, we have that marshal that knows how to do that. So that in itself, the way it was working in the past, was scary, the fact that, you know, they didn’t have a system to track all this information. So my job was to help put this system in place. So I know I did lots of interviews with the people that worked there. I interviewed even some of the marshals to find out all the different skills. I mean, we’re talking about, you know, we talked about project management certifications and leadership training. I mean, they’re telling me about the different rifles that they can shoot, and how far they can shoot. And so, you know, that was – that in itself was kind of, you know, just intimidating, and understanding all the different skills that was r...