Topic Suggestions

Please use the following form to suggest a topic! Let the PMStudent do the research and investigation on a PM-related topic of your choice!

My Interview On The PM Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner over at The PM Podcast surprised me a while back by inviting me to be an interview guest on his show. I was obviously flattered as he puts out the grand daddy of project management podcasts, and I've been listening to the show for many moons. In my opinion Cornelius' The PM Podcast and Dina Scott's Controlling Chaos are in a league of their own.

The interview focuses mostly on my background and the differences between the academic and working worlds of project management education. I also mentioned one of my favorite project management books, "Project Management in the Fast Lane" by Robert Newbold. It is one of my favorite because it does a great job at teaching the mechanics and "how to" of doing Critical Chain Project Management.

Take a listen, and if you haven't already discovered The PM Podcast, I highly recommend going back to listen to past shows. Cornelius does an interview format for most of his shows, and has a lot of great guests. Don't worry, most of them have much more project management experience than I do!

The PM Podcast Episode 065: BS and MBA in Project Management


Please Leave Comments about this Post!

Risk Attitudes

I listened to Cornelius Fichtner's new PM Podcast episode today, How do risk attitudes affect your project?

As usual, Cornelius provides great content in this episode. The interview with Janice Preston was very insightful and helped me with the concept of risk management. In school, they teach you that risk management is almost like it's own little module that you do while planning and insert into the project plan. Sometimes they talk about updating and reviewing it regularly. I've never heard them talk about it in the context of the risk attitudes of project stakeholders.

You really need to listen to this episode if you haven't already, but one aspect I liked was the classification of 4 distinct risk attitudes:

1. Risk Seeker - enjoys and seeks uncertainty in search of greater opportunities, can be overly optimistic and not take possible negative consequences seriously.
   
2. Risk Averse - uncomfortable with uncertainty, doesn't like risk
   
3. Risk Tolerant - reasonably comfortable with uncertainty, but usually sticks head in the sand and ignores them
   
4. Risk Neutral - analyzes risks and weighs negative/positive possible outcomes and probabilities objectively.
   

From my experiences with project managers, it appears to me that the majority are Risk Tolerant. I say that based on how little time and effort is usually put into analyzing and planning for risks. I can also identify with these classifications because of people I've worked with on project teams. Some people seem to have their heads in the clouds and look for risky solutions when a more proven approach would do (Risk Seeker), and others are conservative to the point of seeming cynical (Risk Averse).

Risk Neutral is the goal. Personally, I'd say I'm more of a Risk Seeker right now, but the knowledge and experience I'm gaining are directing me more towards the direction of Risk Neutral. The tools and techniques of risk management are doing that for me by forcing me to look at uncertainty in more of a formal SWOT analysis where my exuberant optimism can be subjected to some logical scrutiny.

Be sure you head over to The Project Management Podcast and check out this episode.

Please leave comments about this post! Email this post to a friend!