“Well begun is half done” — Aristotle (or Mary Poppins, depending who you ask) The beginning of a project is a time when all stakeholders THINK they know what they want, and maybe the team thinks they know what they are supposed to do. Or maybe they are just wondering, “what the heck is this new madness that I’m getting drug into?!” Regardless, it’s a near certainty that your team, your stakeholders and your sponsors - someone is NOT on the same page. And if you launch your project with that mis...
Jul 02, 2025•44 min
Think your project’s on fire? 🔥 Come hear how Maine tried to swap a 30‑year‑old COBOL HR/payroll system for something cloud‑friendly … and wound up with six years, two vendors, and ± $35 M spent—with no live system to show for it. (Psst—Love this kind of real‑world PM talk? Join our member community for templates, monthly problem‑solving Happy Hours with us, and coaching: PMHappyHour.com/membership.) 👋 Your Hosts Kim Essendrup – PM coach, speaker, project‑failure super‑fan Kate Anderson – coff...
Jun 04, 2025•51 min
Our D&D-style project role play was such a hit, we did it again - in a different universe. One far, far away… This time, it’s Kim’s first day as a project manager working on a secret government project for the Empire. As he shows up, he finds that his predecessor… well, let’s just say he didn’t get-on well with his exec sponsor. Kim’s new project is behind schedule, roadblocked with supply chain issues and is out of funding. Can he get the “RTDU” project back on track by the end of the day, ...
Apr 01, 2025•41 min
Ever had a moment where you saw a problem in the world and thought, “Someone should fix that”? What if that someone was you? Mick Ebeling, founder of Not Impossible Labs, joins us to share how he turned a bold promise into world-changing innovation. From helping a paralyzed graffiti artist create art again to launching life-changing tech solutions, Mick’s story is a masterclass in fearless problem-solving. In this episode, we dive into what it takes to commit to the impossible, build the right t...
Mar 11, 2025•50 min
We cannot believe it! It’s been 100 episodes of PM Happy Hour! In this very special episode, we have a retrospective, looking back at when we first decided to do this crazy podcast, to our highlights, lessons, and favorite episodes. We are so filled with gratitude for our amazing community who have supported us these 100 episodes, and the many incredible leaders who have joined us as guests over the years. Note: we recorded this episode as a Linkedin livestream. If you want to watch the video ve...
Feb 27, 2025•52 min
If you are looking for a PM job or considering doing so, you are definitely not alone! The project management field has always had a good amount of mobility, but it sure seems like change has been accelerating the last couple years. And if you are in the hunt for a job right now, it can feel like the market is harder than ever! So what do you do? Focus on getting more certs? Get a recruiter? Submit 500 more applications through Linkedin? To help understand how to land a great PM job in today’s j...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min
As a professional in today’s working environment, you are constantly bombarded by things that demand your attention, your action, the very limited moments in your finite life. (wow, heavy). OK, so there are infinite demands on our time, but finite time. How do we balance those? SWOT analysis?! Of course not! To help us understand how to effectively prioritize in today’s crazy world, Kate and Kim are joined by James Louttit, author of Leading Impactful teams. We talk about prickly pears, paw-paws...
Dec 24, 2024•53 min
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 projects easier, or crush you with red tape? If you are interviewing for a job where they have a PMO, what questions should you ask to get a better under...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 6 min
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 your project provide better deliverables but can also help build a better project team. About our amazing guest, Erik Rueter Erik K. Rueter, PMP, PMI-ACP...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min
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 project leaders need to master is the art of managing with informal authority. Without being people’s ‘boss,’ we need to pull a team of seemingly rand...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
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 that matter. In this refreshingly honest talk about the reality of ways of working, Kate, Kim and their guest Agilist, David Asch, talk in real-world t...
May 14, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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 strategic partner? This episode we are joined by two experienced leaders, Ralph Kliem and Gregg Richie, who have made this transition, and rose to provide...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 9 min
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 PMs. And learning how to manage these misbehaviors in meetings can make or break each meeting. Fortunately, we have help! This episode we are joined ...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr 2 min
“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 your project is big or small, and how to leverage this key communication point to help with overall project success. Why Status Reporting? Essential fo...
Dec 26, 2023•47 min
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 these challenges is perhaps the toughest one: you have to lead this group of people. As project managers, these people almost never report to us - someon...
Sep 19, 2023•43 min
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 timelines. You finally get your amazing project off the ground, you’re humming along then, BOOM! The organization changes. Your stakeholders change. Yo...
Aug 10, 2023•47 min
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 projects more successful? This is the question Jim Johnson set out to understand. In his years with the Standish Group, he and his team set the benchmark ...
Jul 06, 2023•41 min
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 fun and engaging talks at this past year’s PMI Global Summit in Las Vegas. She talks us through the FourSight approach to creative problem solving, th...
May 17, 2023•1 hr 9 min
“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 coordinate a disaster response when there is no power, no cell signal, no wifi? How do community members communicate with each other, find out where to get ...
Apr 07, 2023•46 min
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 have it taking on water, fast. So, how should we approach decision making in a logical way which helps ensure that: The right decisions get made Decis...
Feb 28, 2023•1 hr 6 min
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 where we struggle to see the real benefits of a change we’ve implemented. We figured: why not start where most of us end up: in trouble! Join Kate and ...
Jan 10, 2023•1 hr
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 struggle with and can all get better with. On today’s show, Kate and Kim talk through how to win with these meetings. Jokingly the 30/60/90 minute pla...
Dec 22, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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 his company and introduced a new tool to the market - a PM tool, no less! Pete Bernardo, founder of Punchlist tells us about the project behind foundin...
Sep 29, 2022•56 min
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 up and ran these massive sites vaccinating thousands of people a day - at a time when you couldn’t even hardly hold an in-person meeting? Kim volunteer...
Aug 30, 2022•46 min
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 low (or no) level of project management maturity, no organizational concept of what project management is or how to make projects succeed, and probab...
Jul 19, 2022•42 min
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 in this fun (and, yeah, weird) episode! Kate walks Kim through building his PM character, then takes him through a tabletop RPG (role playing game) of...
Jun 14, 2022•57 min
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 like giving a bunch of other people more work to do, or telling everyone else that they’ve been doing it ‘wrong’ for the last 10 years, and you as a fr...
May 24, 2022•38 min
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 scientific literature on human behavior and combined that with his love of project management to help explain why people do the things they do - and ...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 19 min
“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 another - and again and again :-) Not only can Imposter Syndrome take the fun and motivation out of your job, we see it holding many professionals back f...
Mar 02, 2022•48 min
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 tips in some key areas: Self Awareness Communication Time Management Stakeholder Management Cross functional Collaboration About our amazing guest, Heath...
Feb 04, 2022•53 min
