A quick health update from me to all my listeners. The diagnosis is BPPV and I'm on the road to improvement. However, I'm still not able to publish regular, weekly episodes.

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

If you are a certified PMP then you know what the acronym PDU stands for. It stands for Professional Development Units. Every PMP needs to earn 60 of these PDUs every 3 years in order keep his or her certification. The idea behind having to earn these PDUs is a simple one. PMI wants every PMP to continuously learn. Just like doctors or pilots who have to take classes regularly and practice new skills in order to keep their license, PMI wants us PMPs to learn new project management skills so that we can be the best project managers possible.

The rules describing which activities count towards PDUs and how you have to report and claim them is documented in the “PDU Category Structure and Policies” document. In March 2011 PMI released a new version of these rules that is a lot less complex than the old one. So this has been out for about 10 months now, however, I still receive a lot of emails from confused PMPs who have questions about it. So I went ahead and sat down with Rory McCorkle from PMI to discuss the new structure and get clear descriptions and explanations directly from the horses mouth.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• Why were the PDU policies changed?
• We’ll define the rule that “One hour of effort is equal to one PDU”
• We’ll discuss the PDU Divisions and Categories
• We give examples of PDU earning activities
• And lot’s more.

I've been fighting an inner-ear infection since December. I won't be able to publish PM Podcast episodes for the coming 2 weeks until the infection has run its course.

Seriously... there are no bloopers this year. So don't bother looking for any.

Move along now... no bloopers to see here. Or hear here.

Now really... why are you still here? Go to another episode now.

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

This is another interview recorded at the PMI North American Congress in Dallas Fort Worth. My guest is Rory McCorkle who is the PMI Product Manager - Credentials (and he will tell you himself at the start of the interview what exactly that means). The reason why I’m talking to him is bring you the latest information about the new PMI-ACP certification - that is to say the PMI  Agile Certified Practitioner Exam.

Here are some topics that Rory will discuss in the interview

• When did the PMI-ACP certification get started?
• How was PMI-ACP developed?
• What value does the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner certification have for us as Agile project managers as well as our employers?
• What are the pre-requisites that you have to fulfill before you can take PMI-ACP exam?
• And lot’s more.

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

This is the 2nd episode with interviews that I recorded on the road in recent weeks. As a special treat you are going to hear not just one, but four interviews today that were recorded at the PMO Syposium in Dallas, TX. Each interview is obviously going to be about PMOs, but with a twist...

I attended the PMO Symposium to help out Mark Perry. Mark is a good friend of mine, the host of The PMO Podcast and his company BOT International was an exhibitor at the PMO Symposium. He asked me to fly in and help at the BOT booth. There I quickly realized that the other consultants from BOT International who were working at the booth were all exceptional experts in their fields. So I decided to ask each of them 3 questions that connect their field of experience with the topic of PMO.

In this episode you will hear:

• Terry Doerscher with whom we focus on Project Portfolio Management
• Steve Romero whose expertise is IT Governance and how it relates to PMO
• Mel Bost who will tell you what a PMO needs to do in order to improve lessons learned in your organization
• And last but not least Mark Perry with whom I discuss what business driven PMO setup and strategy means.

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

At the end of October I attended the PMI Global Congress in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. Two weeks later I attended the PMO Symposium in Orlando Florida. As always I meet a lot of interesting people at these events, which is a great opportunity for me to sit down with them and bring you their thoughts, concerns, ideas and insights.

So over the coming weeks we are going to delve into 10 interviews that were recorded at these two events and we begin with a discussion I had with two representatives from the PMI Guadalajara Chapter from Mexico.

My guests Felipe Nunez and Edgar Polanco are attending the congress mainly to participate in the PMI Leadership Meeting, which usually precedes the congress. In this meeting leaders and board members from PMI Chapters get together to learn from each others experience of leading a volunteer project management organization.

We discuss their impressions of the Leadership Meeting, the Global Congress and how they will be setting up their own, local congress in Guadalajara in 2012.

When I started thinking about what to do for episode 200 knew that I definitely didn’t want to do a self-congratulatory, anniversary episode. So I decided instead that I would be lazy, take a step back and ask 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The responses I received are as varied as the people I asked. In total we have over 1 hour of insights, which is why episode 200 consists of 4 parts. Parts 1-3 are all the audio responses and part 4 are the videos.

And now... without further ado here are

• Josh Nankivel - www.pmstudent.com
• Mark Perry - www.thepmopodcast.com
• Margaret Meloni - www.margaretmeloni.com
• Tom Mochal - www.tenstep.com
• Max Wideman - www.maxwideman.com
• Jason Westland - www.method123.com
  

with their number one challenge and solution to project management today.

In case you haven’t listened to part 1, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Ron Holohan - www.pm411.org
  
• Roberto Mori - www.ipma.ch
  
• Elizabeth Harrin - www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com
  
• Stacy Goff - www.asapm.org
  
• David Blumhorst - www.daptiv.com
  

have to say.

By the way... Roberto Mori is the president of IPMA, Stacy Goff is president of ASAPM and you might be wondering if I didn’t reach out to PMI’s president Mark Langley... I did and Mark sent us a video response. To hear what he has to say please watch part 4 with all the videos that we got.

In case you haven’t listened to part 1 and 2, then let me just quickly remind you what we are doing for our anniversary. We have asked 20 thought-leaders in project management one simple question:

In your opinion, what is the number one challenge that project management is facing today and how do we best address it?

The four parts of episode 200 are the compilation of their answers.

So let’s move on and hear what

• Mark Horstman - www.managertools.com
  
• Jack Ferraro - www.myprojectadvisor.com
  
• Lindsay Scott -  www.arraspeople.co.uk
  
• Soma Bhattacharia - www.steppingintopm.com
  
• Terry Doerscher - www.botinternational.com
  
• Andy Kaufmann - www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com
  

have to say.

And when you are done don’t forget to watch part 4 in which you’ll see the four video responses that we received.