E113 Healthcare Focus with Kris Sprague, Mickey Namamura and Tony Antonios from the PMO Global Alliance

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Fabio Zaffagnini and Claudia Spadoni from Rockin’ 1000. Fabio and his team are the founders of the global movement and sensation Rockin’ 1000 which brings together 1000 musicians to perform concerts. The first concert for Rockin' 1000 was a viral video calling for the Foo Fighters to play a concert in their small hometown of Cesena, Italy.Project Management Office Hours is a show about the people and projects in project management from around the world. We’ve talked with people from all the continents discussing war, family, history, projects, careers, neuroscience and so many different topics over 115 shows. Each show was a fantastic experience to listen and learn, but there has been 1 guest PMO Joe has been chasing for years…Fabio and the Rockin’ 1000 team.If you haven’t seen the video you are missing out and you must join the over 61 million viewers who have experienced the passion, excitement, purpose, and emotions from this call to action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozAmXo2bDE&list=RDJozAmXo2bDEFabio shares the origin story for the video, “So I live in a very small town in Italy, it's called Cesena, and I'm a Foo Fighters fan. And at some point I really wanted Foo Fighters to come and play in my hometown.” He added, “So in order to convince them, I needed something crazy to make some sort of crazy request. So one day this idea popped out in my mind and I had this feeling that if we put on a sort of tribute to the band, the biggest tribute ever made, probably Dave Grohl would have been convinced to come over and play a gig. So I had this idea of asking 1000 musicians to perform altogether simultaneously in a park, one of their songs that was Learn to Fly. And this idea in the beginning was something that I just had, but as days went by, it turned into sort of obsession, so I could not stop thinking about it.”Claudia and Fabio tell us their story, how they built the biggest Foo Fighters tribute. Asking the Foo Fighters to play a concert for them in Cesena. How do you bring to life a crazy idea like this? With the help of project management, that's how. How do you get it funded? Where do you find 1000 musicians? How do you coordinate equipment, video, audio, food, and drink for so many people to come together to play just one song? It was over a yearlong project and they were able to pull it off!At one point in the video Fabio says, “I’ve been working on this fucking project for more than one year, waking up every morning thinking about how to make it real and this is all that we’ve got. One thousand people, one thousand rockers that came from all over the nation at their own expense and they did it for just one song…” How many of you have had that same thought leading your projects? I’ve been working on this project for over a year, and I keep waking up every morning wondering how it is going to all come together.Connect with Fabio, Claudia and the Rockin’ 1000 team: https://www.rockin1000.com/en/To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hoursThank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show.The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.comWhere do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community!Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #foofighters #rockin1000

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Sanjiv Augustine, CEO and Founder of LitheSpeed. Sanjiv shared his story and the origins of LitheSpeed. We also hear challenges that organizations are facing and to overcome them. We learn about the Value Management Office, VMO, and how do you go about setting one up.Sanjiv Augustine is an entrepreneur, industry-leading agile and lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant and trainer. With over 30 years in the industry, Sanjiv has served as a trusted advisor to executives and management at leading firms including: Capital One, The Capital Group, CNBC, Comcast, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, General Dynamics, HCA Healthcare, Huntington Bank, The Motley Fool, National Geographic, Nationwide Insurance, Walmart and Samsung.Sanjiv shared his insights on 4 keys to move from a PMO to a VMO. You can learn more about these insights by picking up his book, PMO to VMO Managing for Value Delivery. First is to transition from a project model to a product model. Second, moving from large batches to small batches. Sanjiv said, “Now in today's world, because things are moving so much faster, it's much better to say what is the smallest piece of value that I can deliver to my customers as quickly as possible?”Third, is to track business outcomes or value and not just outputs. Lastly, is to shift from command and control, top-down management to leadership and collaboration. Sanjiv stated, “So, in a nutshell, project to product mindset, change large batch to small batch, tracking outcomes towards value, delivery value, not just outputs. And then transitioning from command and control to leadership collaboration.”Listen to the entire episode to hear the full story from Sanjiv. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147838421Connect with Sanjiv Augustine: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjivaugustine/Learn more about LitheSpeed:https://lithespeed.comTo catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hoursThank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Andrea Clinton and Daniel Zitter. Prior to this discussion we all participated in a Workshop using the Project Management Board game led by Daniel. The discussion included lessons learned during the workshop, the benefits of games for learning, the next generation of PMs, as well as the career transition Andrea recently experienced and how her long project management career helped with the change. Andrea Clinton is a career project manager and leader. She has dedicated her expansive 25 year career to the craft of project management. She has worked across industries from education to manufacturing, software development to data center design/build, gaining experience at variety of companies from small start-ups to Fortune 5 companies such as Apple.Daniel Zitter loves project management, and he's happy to tell anyone who will listen! He appreciates the complexities of managing a project. He enjoys discussing it with others and teaching the methodologies, thought processes and how to deal with the questions and challenges that are sure to arise. He is Co-Founder of PM Zone and the Project Management Board game.If you’re wondering does playing a board game simulate running a project and what can you learn from the game, here is what Andrea had to say, “As we were working through the program, within our gameplay, if you will, you think that you're going to start working on your tasks and you have them all lined up and you're thinking, what could possibly go wrong? I've got this, this is totally easy. And then before you know it, there's a risk thrown up and you have to stop and address that risk or there's a constraint that comes up and then you have to turn around and go backwards or have to try and borrow resources from somewhere else.” We train our youth with games all the time whether in school, at home, or activities. Gaming helps to break down any barriers which might pop up when you are “supposed to be learning”. The fun and excitement of the gaming workshop allows players, Project Managers, to experience situations and learn together building stronger teams and better situational awareness.Listen to the entire episode to hear the full story from Andrea and Daniel. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147834332Connect with Andrea Clinton: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-clinton-16a0172/Connect with Daniel Zitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielzitter/To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hoursThank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #gamification #leadership #learningisfun

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Kris Sprague, Mickey Nakamura, and Tony Antonios all representing the PMO Global Alliance Strategic Healthcare group. In this episode we focused on the work being done by the PMOGA team as well as PMO Leadership and Project Management in Healthcare as well as trends in the industry. Kris Sprague is the Head of Program and Project Planning at Regeneron. He is an executive-levelprofessional with extensive experience building and leading project management organizationsand PMOs that assist business leaders in achieving their strategy. In 2021, he was recognized by the PMO Global Alliance (PMOGA) as one of the Top 4 PMO Leaders in the Americas.Mickey Nakamura is an innovative & dynamic executive with Senior Transformation, CorporateDevelopment, Strategic Planning & Execution, Digital IT, Information Technology, Enterprise PMO - Portfolio/Program/Project/Product, & Customer Experience successes. He was winner of the 2022 Top PMO Leader in the Americas. Tony Antonios is a Senior Leader with 10+ years’ experience across EPMO / PMO, Operations,Transformation, Product, and Service Design. His industry experience includes Telecommunications, ICT Managed Services, Healthcare, and Financial services. Tony has a strong record of accomplishment in designing and implementing both operational and strategic change, to deliver improved financial outcomes, operational efficiency, service excellence, as well as employee and customer experience.One of the items the PMOGA Strategic Healthcare group is doing is penning whitepapers to help educate and communicate about healthcare project management. The first white paper they authored is, “New Ways of Working in the New Normal Post-Covid 19”. To learn more and contribute to the group you can visit the group website, https://www.pmoga.world//healthcare We also had a great discussion on the uniqueness of project management in the healthcare industry. Mickey shared, “the impact of what they do is magnified because at the end of that It service is a potential patient that you can adversely impact, as opposed to making a mistake on some other type of industry where maybe you can go back and correct the dimensions of whatever product you have. In healthcare, it's not a product, it's a person.”Listen to the entire episode to hear the full story from Kris, Mickey and Tony. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147816901Connect with Kris Sprague: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmodirector/Connect with Mickey Nakamura: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickeynakamura/Connect with PMOGA Strategic Healthcare Group Website - https://www.pmoga.world//healthcare To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours Or See the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#pmoglobalalliance #pmoga #healthcare

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Dali Ninkovic from PMI, Matt Hubbard from TrackVia and Michael McCullough from Amtrak. The topic of discussion for this episode is Citizen Development, what is it and why should you care as a project professional. Dalibor (Dali) Ninkovic is responsible for PMI Citizen Developer global B2C and Community business. Over the years, Dali has worked in the low-code and no-code industry through a variety of both, technical as well as commercial roles before joining PMI and firmly believes in democratization of software development. He is a strong supporter of citizen development movement with its hyper-agile approach to digital transformation.Matt Hubbard is a pioneer on a mission to usher in a new era of productivity through citizen development. Matt caught the citizen developer bug in 2011 after he built his first no-code app on TrackVia in 2011. The app took him 8 hours to create but saved him 200 hours of manual labor per year. Today, Matt is Head of Operational Excellence at TrackVia where he teaches individuals how to become citizen developers and organizations how to scale that capability in a safe and effective way.Michael McCullough is a Citizen Development Implementation Strategist who over the past 8 years has supported large project management offices by developing tools and processes which enable projects to be run more efficiently. His passion for innovation and problem solving has led him to embrace and become a global thought leader for Citizen Development. Seeing the unlimited potential in Citizen Development he has worked with Business Leaders, Project Managers, and other Citizen Developers to develop and implement CitDev best practices.In our discussion we explored what is Citizen Development and why is it important for PMI. We learned about the benefits Amtrak has reaped utilizing the low code, no code Citizen Development platform. Dali, Matt, and Michael share their experiences with onboarding CD within organizations and challenges to overcome. If you’re looking to understand Citizen Development and why it matters to you as a project professional then this is the episode you need to hear.Listen to the full episode to hear the full story from Dali, Matt and Michael. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147804173Connect with Dali: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalibor-ninkovic/Connect with Matt: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/💙-matt-hubbard-💛-91b34b98/Connect with Michael: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcculloughmd/To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours Or see the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #citizendeveloper #lowcodenocode

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Mayte Mata Sivera. Mayte shares her story of the personal and professional challenges and successes as a multi-cultural international PMO and Project Management Leader. Mayte and Joe also discussed The PMO Leader, Volunteering, PMI and so much more in this fast-moving hour-long discussion. Mayte is a PMO Director, a PMP certification holder, ScrumAtScale Practitioner and recently she earned the Product Owner Certification. She enjoys public speaking engagements and is a passionate volunteer at PMI and PMI Local Chapters. For six years, she has been a volunteer at TEDxSaltLakeCity. She is also now the Americas Ambassador for The PMO Leader global community. She has more than 15 years of experience leading teams and programs & projects around the world, and her passion is to share her knowledge and nonstop learning from volunteer opportunities. Mayte discussed her move to the United States and the challenges that can come with an international move, “Yeah, that was a big challenge. I was working with a lot of projects around France and with French speakers, so I realized that I was in a meeting and my English level was very low. And if I really wanted to succeed and if you really want to learn a language.”We discussed some strategies for working from home in this new remote work world. Mayte shared some of her tips including, “What I did is every six months I changed my office. So if now I have the table looking at the window in the next six months, I change the table like that. I don't get bored to be always in the same place. And like you, I set an alarm. And when I have work that is more reading emails or supporting people. Sometimes I take some calls working around the backyard, other times I answer some emails from the living room.”Listen to the full episode to hear the full story from Mayte. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147795872Connect with Mayte: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayte-mata-sivera-pmp/To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours Or See the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #volunteering #leadership

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Milan Dordevic for an in-studio discussion. We get to hear Milan share his story and how he began a career in Project Management spanning many countries and industries. Milan and Joe also discussed Leadership, Certifications, Artificial Intelligence and so much more. Milan is a certified project management expert and leader, author, speaker, and business and technology mentor for high-tech start-ups. His expertise is in complex & remote project and product management, organizational development, and change, all of which he has gained over the course of 15 years. Through dynamic leadership and vision, he is driving business and product innovation, automatization, digitalization, program efficiency, and scaling agility in the organization. Milan has made a big impact in his career and when asked about how did he do so much so quickly he shared, “I was never afraid of doing some project or taking the project or jumping into something that I didn't know I was learning by doing. In the meanwhile, every night I was reading about it, I was enrolling myself, currently in parallel with my family.”When asked about some lessons learned during his experiences Milan shared, “I think the biggest mistake that people, organization do, they read about some methodology, they read about some approach or they hear that one company succeeded because they did it in that way and they want to do the same. So there is one person who succeed. He was doing it the same way and you want to do the same. No, but you are in different industry, you have different products, your story is different. You need to take all those things into consideration and apply to your organization company approach. So you cannot implement. There are probably chances that you will succeed, but there are plenty of approaches, plenty of methodologies, frameworks, and you can select one of them or you can make even better, custom one, select the best from all of them and apply to your organization. Make a custom fit.”Listen to the full episode to hear the full story from Milan. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147790273Connect with Milan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dordevicmilan/To catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hoursOr See the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #pmguru #leadership

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Robert Joslin to the show. We get to hear Robert share his story and learn about the founding of AIPMO. Robert and Joe also discussed global associations, industry research, Agile in PMOs and so much more. Robert is a Portfolio/project/program management consultant, professor, and engineer. He has 25 plus years in designing, initiating management delivery of business transformation, reengineering, infrastructure, and strategy development including winning national prizes for ideas and product innovation.Why start AIPMO? “AIPMO stands for the Association of International Project Management Officers. So really the association should be about the individuals rather than the project management office itself. So the O could be officers or office, depending on how you use the term. And the reason I actually set up AIPMO back in 2015 was having worked on projects pretty much all my life and experienced projects, good ones, poor ones, you realize actually in the projects that are poorly run, how it actually impacts individuals.”What differences do you find with PMOs from different regions around the world? “I actually call Saudi Arabia the Kingdom of PMOs because it has so many structured PMOs run by consulting companies like McKinsey, for example. PwC is big into PMOs. So really Saudi Arabia has maybe surprising to some, it's extremely advanced in the way that PMOs they've actually developed.”Listen to the full episode to hear the full conversation with Robert. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147787815Connect with Robert: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-robert-joslin/Connect with AIPMO: www.aipmo.orgTo catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours Or see the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Ruth Bedingfield. Ruth shares her journey working as a PMO Leader and her path to joining KeyedIn supporting customers. Ruth and Joe discuss the importance of listening, how to react when opportunity knocks, and having passion for your work. Ruth has 15 years of business expertise with 5+ years focused on the Project Management Office. She understands what successful PMOs are doing today to bring value for their businesses tomorrow through working closely with enterprise project management professionals looking to deliver the value outcomes their businesses need. She understands the role of the PMO for today’s evolving businesses and jumps at the opportunity to help PMOs achieve their goals through data-driven insights from powerful project portfolio management software.Ruth shared how important it is to be adaptive and flexible as a PMO Leader, “So I think I always like in PMO to being on the ocean. Sometimes it's forever changing, but the ground is never stable. Sometimes the waves are small and it's like a mill pond, sometimes it's like a storm and the waves are crashing down around you. But as a PMO, you learn and you adapt to ride those waves. I think agility and adaptability were really key for me to be able to grow in the role of the PMO Officer.”Many PMOs face the challenge of overcoming the perception of being the Project Management Police. Ruth had great perspective on this, “it was a really interesting journey. When I was able to sort of get hold of the reigns, I was really fortunate to also have the support of some really strong open minded leaders and sponsors as well as PMO that really felt the value. I think that was one key benefit that I certainly benefited from within our organization. But we did a full reset. I said to everybody, just stop, it's not working. We're firefighting, for instance. We're chasing tails, we're not proactively listening. We need to stop. That's exactly what we did. And we went back to basics.”Listen to the full episode to hear how working with KeyedIn as a vendor eventually led Ruth to joining the KeyedIn team supporting customers. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147775079Connect with Ruth: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-bedingfield-5076748a/Connect with KeyedIn: https://www.keyedin.comTo catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hoursOr see the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#projectmanagement #ppm #pmoleadership #keyedin

In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe welcomed Melissa McDonald for an in-studio discussion. We get to hear Melissa share the story behind starting her own consulting firm and why she’s called The Smart PM! Melissa and Joe also discussed Smartsheet, PMO Leadership, Benefits of starting your own business, Serving in the military and so much more. Melissa is the Founder and Managing Director of The Smart PM LLC, a Woman Veteran Owned Small Business that provides expert Project Management services and support through the advanced use and development of Smartsheet's collaborative work management platform. She shared, “My niche is Smartsheet. It was a tool that I found a couple of years back and I've brought it to different organizations with me and it's been a great tool.” Why Smartsheet? “I needed something more than Excel, not as difficult as MS Project for that. So I'd heard of Smartsheet and I looked into it, and you can start off small. You don't have to buy a huge program.” Wonder where the Smart PM name comes from? As PMO Joe said, “So, Smart PM tremendous experience, served our country, supported our country also as a military spouse, educated in universities and in the military, educated in the use of technology to support industry. Folks, I'm trying to build if you're wondering where the Smart PM name comes from, it's all of these things contributing.”Listen to the full episode to hear the full story from Melissa. Be sure to catch the complete conversation and listen to the full episode: https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours/episodes/2147769193Connect with Melissa: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissacmcdonald/Connect with The Smart PM: https://thesmartpm.proTo catch up on previous episodes visit the Project Management Office Hours website - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcasts/project-management-office-hours Or See the guest list for upcoming shows - https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show. The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services. Learn more about The PMO Squad – https://www.thepmosquad.com Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – https://www.thepmoleader.com#smartsheet #projectmanagement #thesmartpm