Excellence in Projects

Every CEO or leader is accountable for overseeing strategy design and delivery in his or her organization. Leaders also recognize that strategy implementation excellence is central to the organization’s sustainable growth and prosperity. Yet most strategic initiatives fail because of flawed implementation, at great cost in time and resources.

In this episode, Ricardo tries to define what making progress really is. Many times even brilliant people get trapped thinking that movement = action = progress. Movement for the sake of proving you are doing something is pointless, consumes energy and resources and will not take you and your organization anywhere.

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

Ricardo takes a quick tour of some parts of the Maersk Triple-E: The Largest Ship to carry containers in the World (2013). The visit took place at the port of Copenhagen, Denmark. Triple E ships belong to a category of super ships for the transport of containers, with a capacity to transport more than 18,000 containers (18,000 TEU). The name "Triple E" is derived from the principles that guided its design:

In this first podcast of 2013, Ricardo comments, from the project management perspective, his surprising visit to the Harry Potter Studios in London. How a brilliant idea, through a outstanding execution, has become one of the most successful projects in the world. See the pictures: http://rvarg.as/harrypotter

In this podcast Ricardo talks directly from Albert Einstein Hospital, his first project management work in health care. He reflects the dimension that project management is taking place in non-typical areas for projects.

Directly from Paris, France, Ricardo talks in this podcast about the most important characteristics of project management for the development of luxury goods, where criteria like speed and cost reduction are revisited and re-contextualized to reach a market that is driven by other assumptions. He focus on the image construction and exclusivity as essential peculiarity of the functional scope (requirement) of this kind of product.

In this podcast, Ricardo presents the highlights of the conference realized last week in Amman, Jordan. The event discussed the association between leadership, governance, execution, and strategy. Ricardo led the discussions about execution and projects.

In this podcast Ricardo discusses the real role of the project manager as a decision maker. He afirms that the project manager doesn't have the function of only generate elegant reports and preparing meetings. His/her role goes above and beyond this. The PM role is to take the right decision to lead the project to success.

In this podcast, Ricardo presents the PMBOK Guide (c) 4th Edition process flow. In the flow, the 42 processes of PMBOK are organized based on the natural project flow and not by the knowledge area. The final artwork of the flow is available for free download at www.ricardo-vargas.com (download area).

Exercises of DVD produced by Ricardo Vargas in partnership with Sete Distribuidora. The DVD objective is to present, in a simple and interactive way, the basic concepts of project management, using one of the most popular tools in the world, the Microsoft Project. Content of this Chapter: – Basic concepts of Project Management – Project Definition – Project Success – Project Phases

In this podcast Ricardo talks about the misunderstanding that many professionals make about the roles of the project manager and the PMO. Many professionals assert incorrectly that the management of the project is a PMO role. He also explains the differences between the 2 roles using an analogy with a car in a road with a driver and a instrument panel.

In this podcast Ricardo discusses the III Annual PM Network Trend Report, published in June, 2009. He presents the main trends in projects induced by the global crisis and how companies and professionals can benefit themselves from this scenario. The PM Network magazine is distributed to PMI members and they can access the file at member's area of PMI website.

In this podcast Ricardo describes his experience at the Madonna, U2 and Seal concerts. Much more than a musical concert, what he saw was an impeccable project management show.