Top 10 Microsoft Project Conference Sessions

If you didn't get the opportunity to attend the 2012 Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, or you were there but couldn't attend all of the sessions that you wanted to, don't worry... you can now access 87 recordings from the event!

I recommend that you start with the keynotes from Microsoft Office Division CVP Kirk Koenigsbauer and then from Microsoft Project GM Ludovic Hauduc. 

Next, select from this list of the top 10 rated sessions from the conference.

1. Deliver SharePoint Success: Key Steps to Reap the Business Benefits
2. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices for Using Project Server 2010
3. The painters, the policemen and the Pope...understanding task movement in Microsoft Project 2010
4. Take Your Project Reporting To the Next Level: Dashboards and Other Tools
5. YJTJ (Your Job Tool’s Job) ™ – Working in Concert with Microsoft Project
6. Unleashing the Value of Earned Value: Applying Schedule and Cost Controls to Measure Project Performance
7. Turning Project Data into Real World Reports: An Overview of Business Intelligence Options
8. Leveraging Project 2010 with Office 365 for Project Management Success
9. Be Loved By Your Development Teams: Using the Team Foundation Server – Project Server Connector
10. Microsoft Project 2010 Desktop Overview

You can view all sessions on the Microsoft Project Showcase Channel.

Post a comment and let me know which session you found the most beneficial (and why).

Free Access to PMI Salary Survey

The Project Management Institute is providing free access to its 2011 Salary Survey (Seventh Edition) for PMI members. The survey includes salary and bonus information from more than 30,000 project management practitioners from around the world.

Represented countries include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

Demographics captured include country of employment, position description, years work experience, years worked in key techniques, years worked in project management, highest formal education level obtain, degree in project management, PMP status, training per year, gender, department/function, industry, type of project, number of employees in entire organization, average project team size, and typical project budget.

Note: You must log in to PMI before attempting to access the download link. If you are not currently a PMI member you should join PMI today!


Download the 2011 PM Salary Survey

How do you SHARE your lessons learned?

We are just finishing up the online study of 'The Lazy Project Manager' through the Project Management Book Club. One of the discussion questions late in the study is about sharing lessons learned. Although the question generated some interesting responses, I didn't really come away with a clear understanding of how to do this, just theories.

Capturing lessons learned is a best practice for project management. Some do it, some don't. For those that do capture lessons learned, the primary reason for doing so is to improve--to learn from the past so you can improve in the future. And the way you improve is to reference the lessons learned during future project so that you can learn from the mistakes or challenges that previous project teams experienced. You could argue that a PMO could also use lessons learned to improve templates and processes as well.

But what good is capturing lessons learned if you do not have a good way to SHARE your lessons leanred? What good is capturing lessons learned if future project teams do not have a way to access the information?

So let's talk about it.

What does your company do to capture and share your lessons learned? When you start a new project, how do you retrieve lessons learned from previous projects. How? Do you look for internal lessons learned or external lessons learned (or both)? How do you incorporate the lessons learned from previous projects into your own projects?

A Lazy Fight

Funny story...

We are currently studying the book The Lazy Project Manager at the Project Management Book Club. I was working on writing one of the posts last night and my son stopped into my home office to talk. He noticed the book sitting on my desk and asked what it meant by 'lazy.' He asked if lazy meant that the project manager was a 'bad' project manager.

I told him that in this situation the term lazy meant smart. It meant that the project manager did things in a way that made the project much more organized and easier to manage for everyone involved. By doing this, the project manager and the team were more productive and were able to get more done with less effort.