PM Point of View
Podcasts
Welcome to Project Management Point-of-View (PM-POV). This podcast series gives you brief and insightful conversations with PM practitioners in a variety of disciplines. Host Kendall Lott draws on his experience as a PM, as CEO of M Powered Strategies and as former CEO of PMIWDC to explore how project managers create value in surprising places. Our guests discuss their unique perspectives on project management, its uses, its challenges, its changes, and its future.
Location:
United States
Genres:
Podcasts
Description:
Welcome to Project Management Point-of-View (PM-POV). This podcast series gives you brief and insightful conversations with PM practitioners in a variety of disciplines. Host Kendall Lott draws on his experience as a PM, as CEO of M Powered Strategies and as former CEO of PMIWDC to explore how project managers create value in surprising places. Our guests discuss their unique perspectives on project management, its uses, its challenges, its changes, and its future.
Language:
English
Contact:
2024760202
Episodes
Critical Conversations
1/24/2023
First, "do no harm"--seems like a good adage, and is consistent with our guest Kevin Coleman who discusses some tenets of his UMD PM Symposium presentation coming this April, called "Unconscious Bias: Recognize it and correct it." Our second critical conversations guest is John Hovell on his UMD presentation, "Conversational Leadership: Convening Conversations that Otherwise Wouldn't Happen" where grounded in Gestalt theory, he pushes us to develop conversations that affirmatively support...
Duration:01:01:51
Managing an AI Project
12/21/2022
Oh Boy, AI projects…they're the worst!! Exploding scope…the endless project. The scale of risk when something goes wrong can literally be exponential. While we PMs always had to watch quality, and we always focused on scope and schedule…the project management problems to launch an AI solution can be insidious, allowing us to make these scope, schedule and quality errors in unobserved and massive ways. AI solutions may be great, but the project management of AI has potential for tremendously...
Duration:01:01:30
Value Integration in Project Management
11/19/2022
Recognizing the importance of identifying "what is the work in front of us" co-hosts Kendall Lott and Mike Hannan discuss improved ways cracking scope to improve project delivery and project value with guests Steven Devaux and Sergiy Potapov. Get past the traditional WBS to Product Flow Diagramming…which gives you progressive elaboration of the sequencing of work as you define it. Then step up to Value Breakdown Structures to identify total costs of work, including the drag (opportunity)...
Duration:00:55:21
Cognitive PM and Military Planning
10/19/2022
Compound Security Threats. Sends a chill through us, yes? Our military expends huge effort in thinking about that future, long-term for planning, short-term planning for execution all to address increasingly complex security concerns. And as our listeners know, where there is planning ("anticipatory decision-making"), there is the collision with cognitive behavior and neuroscience. Yes, Dr. Josh is back and bringing his colleague (and student of NeuralPlan) Jay Macias of the Joint Special...
Duration:01:00:37
The Beauty of AHP
9/20/2022
Analytical Hierarchy Process--check this as it is a method (and you can get tools) that absolutely help you with project prioritization. Co-Host Mike Hannan and I talk with Stuart Easton, CEO of Transparent Choice, about this accessible approach tying decision science to project prioritization, selection and sequencing. Lending focus to executive teams, it helps us focus on what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Value is not an objective thing, and humans aren't great estimator....
Duration:01:04:55
PM Techniques In Ukraine
8/23/2022
Guest Sergiy Potapov and co-host Mike Hannan are at it again discussing precepts of TOC and Cynefin that connects with effective PM practices to produce results, even in shocking and shattering circumstances, such as found in Ukraine during the war. As Sergiy concludes, “Project management works, absolutely, in non-standard situations." But let’s not get hung up on outputs, the classic PM premium benchmark. As Sergiy wryly notes, "The project with a good output and no outcome is a...
Duration:00:58:23
Unleash Flow by Taming It…
7/19/2022
Episode 100, where a theory based in manufacturing collides with the world of Knowledge Work (yeah, I'm talking about you, PMs) and we find a way to think about Critical Change Project Management. We consider how to get to a pattern of "Unity of Purpose" a key pattern for success, and incidentally, a way of clearing barriers for leaders to have the bandwidth to stay focused. Mirrors and signals, autonomy and spooky action (decisions) at a distance, in the end we need teams to understand what...
Duration:00:59:22
PM Pessimist Optimist Synthesis
6/22/2022
[6/10 1:30 PM] Kendall Lott "PM is BS!" says Ben Damman, our (highly successful) guest today. Well, maybe...the concern is we have become ceremonial or process-centric over effectiveness. WE HAVE SO MUCH POTENTIAL, but WE ARE STUCK . And that of course, takes us back to a question of value. Products or projects, where is value is driven? Is this about general practices or specific adaptations. Today we have the pessimist view, the optimist view, and surprisingly, we landed at some...
Duration:00:53:43
Ecosystem Designer
5/16/2022
PMs as leaders you own understanding the design of the org, the ecosystem you sit in. But to what purpose? Join me and cohost Mike Hannan as we hear from Matt Barcomb who highlights understanding the organization as a system so that Product Management can actually be effective. From strategy to structure (value streams, teams, roles, constraints) to rewards, we have to get this right to get effective work, and it requires a design. But not design for design's sake, Mike reminds us "to what...
Duration:01:00:58
PM under Duress
4/21/2022
PMs how about we get to look at our discipline in action? From the western border of Ukraine, Sergiy Potapov tells us how he chose to have impact by being a PM to deliver humanitarian aid, and what lessons from Critical Chain theory and PM he has applied…really. Touching on the Cynefin decision-model, Critical Chain, risk and stakeholders, the conversation highlights that we PMs can make a difference in the community around us. Listen in and hear current example that gives us insight into...
Duration:00:53:34
Design Thinking
3/23/2022
Design mindset, before you even get to design thinking, let's figure out the problem and check assumptions. Guest Charles Lambdin describes the need and method of creating a frame of thought that has us testing hypotheses of what we need, and making faster smarter bets on the direction we should follow. A key takeaway: the first thing you design shouldn't be over designed and should be wrong…our goal is learning what is needed. The evidence is it saves overall design cycle time. Ultimately,...
Duration:01:02:25
Change Management and TOC
2/22/2022
"I will do what I can, with what I have, where I'm at." This is a different take on change management; we break down what people say about change but linking it to the underlying framework from the Theory of Constraints. We should recognize that our organizations are fragile systems, and may be running on consequences and not on relationships. The organization has a sort of physics, and what we see in a lot of change environments is directive, not engagement, and we overcomplicate it--and...
Duration:01:00:44
Change Management and TOC
2/22/2022
"I will do what I can, with what I have, where I'm at." This is a different take on change management; we break down what people say about change but linking it to the underlying framework from the Theory of Constraints. We should recognize that our organizations are fragile systems, and may be running on consequences and not on relationships. The organization has a sort of physics, and what we see in a lot of change environments is directive, not engagement, and we overcomplicate it--and...
Duration:01:00:34
Cognitive Behavior
1/29/2022
"Do all the humans on your team have brains?" Not a comment on ability but on cognition and hardwired biases; if they have brains, they make mistakes in regular patterns. PMs follow the same logical paths of cognition and shortcuts that all humans do, some of which lead us to wrong conclusions and unhelpful behaviors. As planners and forecasters, our decisions have consequences for others, from executives wanting "the right answer" to colleagues whose performance reviews rely on work,...
Duration:01:05:31
Heretical Agile
12/21/2021
In this episode, organizational change consultant and expert Agilista Leila Rao grounds us in the reality that investing in people is central to successful Agile transformation. While we’re often distracted by the allure of “Agile theater,” genuine system improvements are generated through transparency and awareness. Rao articulates that Agile is how we make human truths and values—such as openness, empowerment, trust and courage—viable in the workplace. Optimizing the customer experience as...
Duration:01:00:53
Project Management Forward from the 2021 UMD Symposium
11/22/2021
We know change is constant. So as business practices evolve and new systems & tools are developed, the role of Project Managers and the skills they rely on must change to meet the new demands. PMs who don't move forward risk being left behind.
In the third episode from our 2021 UMD PM Symposium series, we discuss the role of "Innovation PMs," and how they can effectively manage open-ended, amorphous innovation projects. And Data: how to collect and leverage meaningful data to make better,...
Duration:01:00:44
Where has PM Gone?
10/26/2021
Guest Galen Low, from The Digital Project Manager (DPM), discusses the challenges of the conventional project manager and the ways we define the field. As Lowe addresses, the expansion of the digital environment and transforming customer have led project management into navigating an ever-changing landscape. Digital PMs often serve as a bridge. Value delivery requires collaboration across all phases and iterations of a life cycle, from product to project to program. The nature of projects...
Duration:01:06:21
Effective Communication from the 2021 UMD Symposium
9/22/2021
Transformation Attenuation: The loss of signal that occurs as a message moves down the chain from the C suite.
Illusion: The assumption that communication has taken place, when in fact it hasn't.
Here we explore these two phenomena in depth, and examine ways to avoid them, thereby increasing project & organizational effectiveness.
Check out more presentations from the UMD Symposium at https://pmsymposium.umd.edu/pm2021/
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Duration:01:00:16
Product Management and the Toaster
8/26/2021
A team, a technology, a toaster. A tale of the Product Manager and the Project Manager brought to life as co-hosts Kendall and Mike ride the narrative road with Tom Klaff, the CEO who made it happen. The story of manufacturing a new kind of toaster just as trade tensions increase with a main supplier and then pandemic lockdown is as interesting as the intertwining roles the Product Manager and Project Management. A Man, A Mission, Toast…well, really convenience and improved customer...
Duration:00:45:08
Avoiding Failure from the 2021 UMD Symposium
7/22/2021
The statistics around project success vs. failure are less than heartening, to say the least. For all the tools and expertise PMs bring to the table, we somehow manage to miss the mark more often than we should. Here we feature highlights from two presentations of the 2021 UMD Project Management Symposium - one from a science/engineering angle, the other from construction - plus interviews with the presenters, who offer actionable insights into how you can manage crisis and avoid failure, no...
Duration:00:59:57