5 Minutes Podcast with Ricardo Vargas

In this podcast, Ricardo explains that, unlike what many people think, the assumptions and restrictions (or constraints) often need to be registered not only in one but in several documents throughout the progression of the project planning.

In this podcast, Ricardo addresses one of the biggest challenges in the project environment, how can we educate the sponsor to make a decision based on facts, not just feeling. He also gives tips on how we can escape the dangers in this process.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about two approaches in the management of very small projects. The first approach deals with the management of projects in a cluster. The second seeks to simplify the processes of project management, reducing management complexity.

In this podcast, Ricardo continues to talk about the types of relationships between the activities in the schedule. Today he tackles the Finish-to-Finish and the Start-to-Finish types. In the end, he leaves a great tip.

In this first podcast of two, Ricardo talks about the types of relationships between the activities in the schedule. It's a simple concept but a lot of people do not fully understand when putting it into practice. This week, Ricardo explains when to use the Finish-to-Start and Start-to-Start links. Next week, he will talk about the remaining two types, the End-to-End, and Start-to-Finish.

How to measure how far you are to finish a task where creativity is relevant and inspiration can accelerate or decelerate the progress? In this podcast, Ricardo talks about how we can best measure the real physical progress of the project and explains the application of the concept of anchoring and the WBS decomposition.

In this second part of the podcast about Lines of Balance, Ricardo talks more about how this concept can be used in the project's planning and control phases. This time, Ricardo gives an example about the application of lines of balance in an election vote counting process. Do not forget to listen to the first part of this podcast.

In this podcast, Ricardo begins to explain what Line of Balance are and how can they be used. He gives an example of how to plan repetitive tasks in order to achieve optimal resources allocation and also know how the project's speed and progress evolve. Next week, he will bring an example related to elections.

In this podcast, the last one of 2013, Ricardo talks about his perspectives for next year, in the world of project management. He highlights that the project manager's technical ability is becoming something already established and the professional should seek to differentiate herself to improve her ability to propose new ideas, new approaches, to risk and innovate in the projects.

In this podcast, Ricardo makes his retrospective of 2013. Again, a year with mixed feelings. A good year for some, a tough one for others. One of the points highlighted by Ricardo was the dangerous excess of expectation, from companies, governments and professionals, about what really project management can bring as a result, when well executed. In the next podcast, he will talk about the perspect...

In this episode, Ricardo talks about a question that is one of the most frequent in the project area: Must the project manager have technical knowledge regarding the project product? An engineering project, for example, must necessarily be managed by an engineer?

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about a complex situation where a stakeholder, on the client-side, refuses to accept deliveries, seeking to impute contractual penalties to the company managing the project. Ricardo shows two actions, one preventive and one corrective, that can be taken.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the cultural differences within a project environment. He gives valuable tips on how the project manager must address the differences within his team, the sponsors and the stakeholders and can thus create an effective communication process, based on respect and cultural integrity of all parties.

In this podcast, directly from the PMO Symposium 2013 in San Diego, Ricardo makes a brief summary of his perceptions about the main themes of the event, and comments the keynotes by Robert Kaplan (one of the creators of the Balanced Score Card - BSC) who spoke about the strategic position of the PMO, and Daniel Pink, on influence. He also comments on the winning of PMO of the Year Award.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the difficulties that the project manager goes through when dealing with an organization with low maturity in project management. He shows how the project manager can cope with the problems arising from this scenario.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the PMI Global Congress 2013 which took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He makes a brief summary of his perceptions of the key topics of the event, such as, how the project manager can practice and improve his, or her, leadership and influence skills. Ricardo also talks about the importance of participating in the PMI Global Congress, especially for the g...

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the differences between processes and projects. There is still much confusion in people's minds about the characteristics and purposes of one or the other. Ricardo seeks to remedy this confusion by bringing a few examples that illustrate each case.

In this podcast, Ricardo about the main differences in management technology projects as compared to other projects.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about ego, vanity and jealousy in the project environment. He gives tips on how we can deal with these personal characteristics that may directly or indirectly affect the project.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about his visit to the world's largest ship, the Danish Triple-E, anchored in the Copenhagen harbour this month. The ship was manufactured in South Korea and had several technological solutions of a sustainable design. The "E" stands for "Economic of Scale", "Energy Efficiency" and "Environmental Performance". Learn more about the ship at www.worldslargestship.com

In this podcast, Ricardo talks, from the project management perspective, about the impressive salvage operation of the Italian liner Costa Concordia which crashed into rocks and sank on January 13, 2012.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the process of project closure. He explains the various reasons why it is important to make the closing correctly and lists the documents required for this phase of the project.

In this podcast, Ricardo throws the question: is improvisation during a project always something negative? He cites scenarios where improvisation can be good and how we can take advantage of that.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the release of his new book, "Microsoft Project 2013: Standard, Professional e Pro para Office 365", co-written with Allan Rocha, Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP). The book addresses the new features presented in this new version of the software and maintains the characteristics of the series of books about Project initiated by Ricardo in the book "Gerenci...

In this podcast, Ricardo gives his opinion about a topic discussed on social networks all the time: who is the project manager? Ricardo addresses three possibilities, would the project manager be a superman, an evil being or a poor man?