Happy 2007! For the first episode of the new year, I speak with Dr. Graham Oakes, founder and principal of Graham Oakes Ltd., a UK-based consultancy set up in 2003 to help organizations untangle complex technology, relationships, processes and governance. He has worked with organizations such as Sony, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Cisco, MessageLabs and the Open University to define and set up projects, and then to steer those projects to success. We had a very interesting conversation on keeping in touch with reality with effective project assurance and Graham shared a few tools that he uses that I, in turn, share with you under Helpful Resources! I have some listener feedback and Derry Simmel’s PMO Minute covers the topic of staffing.

The latest give away is for MindJet’s MindManager mind mapping software. I have two copies of MindManager (PC or Mac) that I will be giving to some lucky listeners! If you’d like to check out MindManager in the meantime, visit MindJet’s website and download either their 5-day or 21-day demo version. Want to hedge your bet a bit and have a better chance of winning a copy? Give me a buzz at 800.758.4024 and I’ll enter your name in the drawing twice! Or you can e-mail me at mmgiveaway@controllingchaos.com. Make sure to contact me by January 31, 2007.

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Helpful Resources from Graham Oakes:

• Independent Assurance Diagrams (Powerpoint)
• Project Review Template (Excel)
• Link to Graham’s workshop on February 2, 2007 in London: IT Project Assurance: Helping Sponsors, Project Managers and Senior Executives Meet Their Objectives

Technorati tags: project assurance, project+governance project+management agile leadership scrum pmbok pmp pmo pmi project+manager