The Power of Positive Leadership: Coaching Your Team Instead of Fixing Their Problemspresented by Laura Berman Fortgang

http://pm.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Laura-Article-Audio-v2.mp3 Picture yourself stuck in traffic. The car in front of you won’t signal, you have no idea what they’re about to do, and your frustration spikes. That feeling—annoyed, stressed, maybe even a little angry—is exactly what happens on our teams when people don’t communicate. As project managers and leaders, we often unintentionally create that “traffic” feeling. We move fast, we solve problems, and we tell people what to do. But when we don’t coach people, don’t communicate clearly, and don’t help them think for themselves, we become the bottleneck and the stress point. Positive leadership offers another way: shift . . . continue reading

Using GenAI to Validate and Improve Project Schedulespresented by Robert Londonhttp://pm.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Robert-London-Audio-for-article.mp3 Project managers are used to living in the world of time, cost, and scope—but risk often sits in the background as something “owned” by someone else. In reality, schedule risk is central to whether your project succeeds or fails. The good news is that Generative AI (GenAI) can help you see risks in your schedules more clearly and more quickly, without waiting for a separate risk function or a complex toolset.   This article walks through a practical, project‑manager‑friendly way to use GenAI to validate and improve schedules for Agile, hybrid, and traditional projects. Why Project Managers Need to . . . continue reading

The Art of Giving Feedback: Valuing People, Getting Resultspresented by Briana McManus

http://pm.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Briana-Read-Article.mp3 As project managers, we live in a world of deadlines, deliverables, and stakeholder expectations—but under all of that structure is something more fragile and more powerful: our relationships with people. Feedback sits right at that intersection. It’s where “getting results” meets “valuing people,” and it’s where many teams either build trust or quietly lose it. Feedback Is Normal—and It’s an Act of Love For a lot of people, hearing “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” feels like a warning siren.  We assume something is wrong. We brace for impact. We think, “I’m in trouble,” or “What . . . continue reading

Hardening Federal Procurement: Using Agile-at-Scale with Product Management and Discovery to Drive Up Success Rateswith John JohnsonDiscover the power of integrating product management and discovery-driven practices in transforming federal procurement. Learn how agile-at-scale methodologies, fueled by product management principles, enhance resilience, mitigate risks, and maximize outcomes in government initiatives.  Let’s explore why so many public-sector projects fail and how changing the way government buys and builds work can dramatically improve outcomes, especially for project management professionals. Project managers operate inside a flawed system and that real progress requires objective-based procurement, empowered product teams, and a shift from outputs to outcomes. Why Failure is Baked into the Current System We often “ fool ourselves” about project success. . . . continue reading

Project Failure is Not an Option: Making Projects Successfulwith Dr. Frank MurphyAre traditional metrics outdated? As project failures continue, the question is what are we doing wrong? Have we skipped steps? Do we change our minds on what the project should be and call that agile? How can we meet business case objectives while still adapting to new information as the project evolves? Project Failure Is Not an Option Dr. Frank Murphy’s central argument is not that projects never fail. It is that project teams need to think differently about failure, success, and what can still be salvaged when things go wrong. In his view, projects are fundamentally about relationships, and . . . continue reading

Show me Your RAID LOG!with Kim EssendrupKim Essendrup argues that most projects don’t fail because teams missed some advanced method. They fail because the basics—risks, actions, issues, and decisions—weren’t managed well. His answer is a simple tool: the RAID log, and a simple question to start with any project: “Show me your RAID log.” Project Management is Hard, and Basics Cause Failure Essendrup draws on years of work as a project manager, PMO leader, consultant, and podcast co‑host. He talks regularly with project managers and PMO leaders in all kinds of organizations—large, small, public, private—and sees two things clearly: Project management is hard because project managers . . . continue reading

Reactive to Proactive: Injecting Collaborative Project Planning to Improve Delivery Successwith Nicole Rumeau & Courtney Johnson

What do you do when you inherit an organization that is operating almost entirely in reactive mode? At ARLIS, Nicole Rumeau and Courtney Johnson walked into exactly that situation and began building the processes, tools, and collaboration needed to make project delivery more stable and successful. The Starting Point: An Organization in Reactive Mode ARLIS, the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security, sits at the intersection of academia and defense contracting as a Department of Defense-supported university affiliated research center, or UARC. It works on sole-source applied research contracts that help the federal government address difficult intelligence and security . . . continue reading

Team-Based Planning: A Framework for Modernizing Public Sector Program Fundingwith Bill BunceIn government, everyone is chasing modernization and AI, but most agencies still plan and fund work the same way they did a decade ago. Bill Bunce argues that to keep up, we need to move from project-based budgeting to team-based, outcome-focused funding. Why Traditional Projects Keep Failing Bunce starts with a familiar reality: federal projects fail at staggering levels every year. In his view, the biggest reasons are not just scope creep and insufficient resources, but a breakdown in communication and collaboration. Even when objectives and key results (OKRs) are clearly defined, projects can go off the rails if: Communication . . . continue reading

No One Wants an Awesome Product. They want an Awesome Experience.with Beth MartinBeth Martin’s talk invites product teams to stop obsessing over the thing they’re shipping and focus instead on the experience people have around it. You can build an excellent app, website, or database, but if the path users must walk is confusing, slow, or frustrating, your “awesome product” will still feel bad to them. Start With Who Your Users Really Are Martin asks us to imagine we’ve built a digital product for a specific group and now need to scale it to a broader, more diverse audience we don’t know well. Her first move is to “time travel” back to . . . continue reading

Managing by the Numbers: How Project Managers are Using ROI to Leadwith Bill Brantley

Mandatory training that people don’t hate? See how to take a failing, mandatory program and turn it into something leaders value. Turn resistance into engagement, while gaining ideas you can apply to your own mandatory training, change initiatives, and long-running programs. Using ROI to Redesign a Federal Supervisor Training Program For 17 years, Dr. Bill Brantley worked across multiple U.S. federal agencies, including OPM, Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In one of his most challenging assignments, he was asked to rescue a failing mandatory supervisor training program. He chose to manage it “by the . . . continue reading