PODCAST · business
Project Management is Boring
by Jordon Keen
Project Management Is Boring focuses on the unglamorous work that actually makes projects succeed. We talk planning, requirements, meetings, stakeholder management, and execution—without pretending PMs are superheroes or that every problem can be solved with a new framework. Built for IT project managers, business analysts and professionals who value discipline, clarity and realism over buzzwords.
Episodes
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Target Canada: The Recovery That Came Too Late
This episode explores one of the more painful parts of the Target Canada story: some problems were reportedly improving near the end, but the business no longer had enough time, money, or trust to continue. Recovery has a deadline. Once customer trust, financial patience, and executive support…
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Target Canada: Change Management at Retail Speed
This episode focuses on the human side of Target Canada: employees learning new systems, stores preparing to open, vendors adapting to new processes, and teams operating under intense schedule pressure. Even strong workers can fail inside an unrealistic operating model. For PMs, the episode...
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Target Canada: Governance Theatre
This episode examines how large programs report progress under pressure. Steering committees, status dashboards, risk logs, and executive updates are only useful if they help leaders make better decisions. If governance becomes performance theater, the organization may hear good news long after...
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Target Canada: The Customer Promise Gap
This episode focuses on the gap between what Target Canada delivered and what Canadian customers expected. Many customers expected the familiar U.S. Target experience: attractive products, good prices, reliable inventory, and a strong shopping experience. When the Canadian stores did not...
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Target Canada: The Forecasting Trap
This episode looks at demand forecasting in a new market. Target Canada had to estimate customer behavior without the benefit of mature Canadian sales history. The company had brand awareness, but brand awareness is not the same as repeat purchasing behavior. For PMs, this episode explores...
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Target Canada: Empty Shelves, Full Warehouses
This episode focuses on the contradiction at the heart of Target Canada’s operations: stores could have empty shelves while distribution centers had inventory. The issue was not simply “not enough product.” It was a flow problem involving systems, warehouse processes, forecasting, data, vendor...
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Target Canada: The Data Was the Critical Path
This episode examines one of the most important lessons from Target Canada: bad data can break a business. Product dimensions, vendor information, units of measure, tariff codes, item descriptions, and other data elements affected purchasing, warehousing, replenishment, and shelf availability.…
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Target Canada: SAP Was Not the Villain
This episode focuses on Target Canada’s technology environment, including the implementation of SAP. The lesson is not simply “ERP projects are hard.” The deeper lesson is that enterprise systems require disciplined processes, trained users, strong governance, clean master data, and realistic...
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Target Canada: Big Bang Expansion
This episode explores Target Canada’s aggressive store-opening approach. Instead of entering slowly, learning from early locations, and adjusting, Target moved toward a large-scale launch. The pace reduced the organization’s ability to test assumptions, absorb feedback, and stabilize operations...
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Target Canada: The Deal That Started the Clock
Primary Focus: Target’s acquisition of Zellers lease locations PM Lesson: Strategic commitments can become project constraints before the project team is ready. This episode examines the real estate decision that gave Target rapid access to the Canadian market. Acquiring lease interests allowed...
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Target Canada: The Launch That Outran Reality
This opening episode introduces the Target Canada case, the major causes behind the failure, and the core themes of the season. It explains why this case matters to project managers: it was a major strategic initiative with compressed timelines, technology implementation challenges, data quality...
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PMIB Season 3 Trailer: Target Canada
The trailer introducing Season 3 of the Project Management is Boring podcast - Target Canada
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Knight Capital: The Anti-Knight Framework
We’ve spent this season studying one of the most expensive operational failures in modern markets. Knight Capital lost approximately $440 million in about forty-five minutes. That headline is dramatic. But the deeper lesson was never the dollar amount. It was the structure. Or more accurately—…
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Knight Capital: Technical Debt is Leadership Debt
This season has explored a pattern many organizations miss: Failures rarely begin in the moment of collapse. They begin earlier. In assumptions left unverified. In controls left untested. In drift left unmanaged. In governance that looked stronger than it was. Today we’re talking about another…
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Knight Capital: Nothing Broke, So It Must Be Fine
We’ve talked about assumptions. We’ve talked about speed pressure. We’ve talked about governance theater— what happens when controls exist on paper, but not in practice. Today, we’re talking about something quieter. Something slower. Something that rarely feels urgent when it begins. Drift.…
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Knight Capital: Governance Theater
In the last episode, we talked about speed pressure. How faster systems demand stronger governance. How the more quickly a system moves… the less time exists to detect, decide, and recover. And because of that— high-speed systems require more structure. More verification. More oversight. More...
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Knight Capital: Speed Pressure
In the last episode, we talked about assumptions. How they stack. How they compound. And how unverified beliefs quietly shape system behavior before anyone notices. But assumptions become most dangerous in one particular kind of environment: Fast ones. Because the faster a system moves— the less...
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Knight Capital: It Probably Works
In the last episode, we talked about detection. Not whether signals exist—but whether those signals trigger action. Because if alerts require interpretation…they introduce delay. But today, we’re stepping back. Because before detection fails… before response slows… before systems behave...
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Knight Capital: If Your Alarms Require Debate
In the first half of this season, we focused on risk. What could go wrong. Where systems break. And why organizations often see those risks… but fail to control them. But once a system goes live, risk stops being theoretical. It becomes behavior. And at that point, the question changes. Not “what...
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PMIB Season 2: The System is Live - Season 2 Continues
The second half of Season 2 of Project Management Is Boring shifts from risk to execution—exploring how systems behave under pressure and how project management shapes detection, decision-making, and response. Through the lens of real-world failure, we break down how poor system design leads to...
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Knight Capital: Risks Without Controls Are Just Predictions
By this point in the season, we’ve examined the Knight Capital incident from multiple angles: deployment verification, technical debt, change classification, rollback, authority, signal recognition, and incident coordination. Each of these failures contributed to the outcome. But they all point…
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Knight Capital: War Rooms are a Symptom
By the time an organization declares an incident, the problem is no longer detection. It’s coordination. Multiple teams begin investigating. Engineers search logs, leaders request updates, stakeholders ask for timelines, and communication channels fill quickly with information — and questions.…
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Knight Capital: The First Signal Never Looks Like Failure
In complex systems, failure rarely announces itself clearly. It does not begin with alarms, flashing dashboards, or obvious error messages. Instead, the earliest signals of trouble often look like something ordinary: a slight change in behavior, a metric drifting out of range, or activity that…
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Knight Capital: Who Gets to Stop the System?
In the previous episode, we talked about rollback — the ability to reverse a change when something goes wrong. But rollback capability alone isn’t enough. Someone still has to decide to use it. In fast automated environments, hesitation can be just as dangerous as technical failure. When…
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Knight Capital: You Don't Invent the Exit During the Fire
In the previous episodes, we’ve looked at several structural failures that contributed to the Knight Capital incident: incomplete deployment verification, unmanaged technical debt, and changes that were treated as routine when they carried significant systemic risk. But there’s another discipline...
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Knight Capital: Routine is a Dangerous Word
This episode explores a deceptively simple problem inside complex systems: the danger of treating high-impact changes as routine work. At Knight Capital, the deployment that triggered a $440 million loss was not classified as extraordinary. It was not handled as a high-risk event. It was treated...
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Knight Capital: Dormant Doesn't Mean Dead
This episode explores a quieter but equally dangerous structural problem in complex systems: technical debt that remains in production long after it has been forgotten. At Knight Capital, the code that triggered the trading malfunction was not new. It was legacy logic called Power Peg — software...
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Knight Capital: Seven of Eight
This episode examines a deceptively small technical detail that triggered one of the most expensive software failures in financial history: a deployment that updated seven servers out of eight. At first glance, this kind of issue sounds like a minor technical oversight. In many environments it...
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Knight Capital: A Normal Morning
On August 1st, 2012, Knight Capital lost $440 million in just forty-five minutes. There was no cyberattack. No rogue trader. No dramatic villain. Just one incomplete deployment. One server out of eight. Legacy code that was believed to be dormant. In this season opener of Project Management Is...
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Season 2 Trailer
In August 2012, Knight Capital Group pushed a routine software update to its automated trading system. Seven servers were updated. One was not. In 45 minutes, the company lost $440 million. No cyberattack. No sabotage. No dramatic villain. Just a missing update, an untested rollback, and…
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Military Transition: The Emotional Ambush
Leaving the military isn’t just a career transition. It’s an identity shift. In uniform, everything is defined — your rank, your role, your mission, your tribe. The structure is built in. The feedback is constant. The purpose is clear. Then one day, it’s gone. In this episode of Project…
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Military Transition: Certs are Just Badges, But You Still Need Them
Most veterans treat certifications like a trophy case—collecting as many as possible to "prove" they belong in the civilian world. But in this episode, we’re calling it what it really is: a bureaucratic game of market logistics. We break down why certifications aren't a measure of your...
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Military Transition: Project or Charlie Foxtrot?
Why do IT projects feel so wrong to people with military experience? In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we break down why veterans instantly spot dysfunction in civilian projects—unclear objectives, fuzzy authority, missing logistics, and weak communication. What looks like...
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Military Transition: Beating the Bot
Before your résumé ever reaches a human, it’s scanned, filtered, and judged by software that doesn’t understand military roles, leadership under pressure, or real-world problem solving. It only understands keywords. In this episode of Project Management is Boring, we break down how ATS systems...
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Military Transition: Command Doesn't Work Here
In the military, authority is clear. Orders move. Responsibility is defined. When something breaks, you know who owns it. In corporate environments, that structure fades. Influence replaces rank. Progress depends on negotiation, relationships, and timing—not position. In this episode of Project...
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Military Transition: You Were Already a Project Manager
If you served in the military, you didn’t “switch careers” into project management — you translated it. In this first military-themed episode of Project Management Is Boring, we break down why so many veterans already have the core PM skills long before they ever open a PMBOK or sit for a...
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Healthcare.gov - When Process, Politics and Code Collide
Healthcare.gov is often remembered as a broken website. In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we unpack why that story misses the point. The failure wasn’t caused by bad developers or an impossible deadline — it was the result of fragmented ownership, unclear authority, ignored...
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The Science of Saying No
In this episode of the Project Management is Boring podcast, we explore why refusing requests is one of the most powerful skills a project manager can have. Projects always run within boundaries—time, budget, scope, and resources—and saying yes to everything undermines those limits. We look at…
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The Email That Changed Nothing
We’ve all sent it. The carefully worded status update. The polite nudge. The “just circling back” email that should have moved things forward. And then… nothing happens. In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we break down why emails so often fail to create real movement — even when the...
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Risk Logs and Real Life
Risk logs are supposed to make projects safer. So why do they feel like anxiety spreadsheets no one wants to open? In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we look at risk logs as a mirror for human behavior — how we avoid naming uncomfortable risks, why we downplay what scares us, and…
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Urgency and the Illusion of Control
Everything feels urgent. Deadlines. Messages. “Just one quick ask.” In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we unpack urgency culture — why constant speed feels productive, why it gives leaders a false sense of control, and why it often makes projects slower, riskier, and more fragile…
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The Necessary Adversary
In this episode, we explore the role of the “necessary adversary” in project management — the stakeholders, team members, or processes that challenge assumptions, push back on decisions, and create tension that feels uncomfortable but ultimately strengthens the project. We discuss why conflict...
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Project Management Tools: The Modern Alchemy
Somewhere along the way, we decided that if we just bought the right tool, our messy projects would magically turn into gold. In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we go after the cult of dashboards, workflows, and AI-powered everything — and why so many teams mistake tooling for...
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Scope Creep and the Monsters We Make
Scope creep doesn’t show up wearing a villain cape. It shows up as “just one more thing.” In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we rip apart the myth that scope creep is caused by demanding stakeholders or sloppy users. Most of the time, it’s created by us — by vague requirements,...
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Project Charters are Useless (and Why That's Our Fault)
Project charters were supposed to be the north star of every project. So why do they feel like paperwork nobody reads? In this episode, we tear down how charters became bloated, vague, and disconnected from reality — and why that isn’t a tooling problem, a PMO problem, or a leadership problem.…
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Meetings, Mayhem and the Myth of Alignment
Everyone talks about alignment. Everyone schedules meetings to get it. And yet, most projects still fall apart in slow, confusing ways. In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we dig into why alignment is so fragile — and why meetings often create the illusion of agreement without...
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The Myth of the Rockstar Project Manager
The “rockstar PM” sounds impressive — until you look at what it actually creates. In this episode, we break down why the myth of the heroic, always-on, fire-fighting project manager damages the profession and sets impossible expectations. We talk about how organizations use the idea of a rockstar...
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The Quiet Comeback of Planning
For years, “planning” has been treated like a dirty word in project management. Too slow. Too rigid. Too waterfall. Too… boring. And yet, here we are. In this episode of Project Management Is Boring, we talk about why detailed planning is quietly making a comeback — even in organizations that…
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Boring is the Goal
Project management doesn’t need hype, hustle culture, or superhero narratives—and honestly, it shouldn’t have them. In this first episode of Project Management Is Boring, we unpack why “boring” is actually the highest compliment a project can earn. We talk about what calm, predictable delivery...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Project Management Is Boring focuses on the unglamorous work that actually makes projects succeed. We talk planning, requirements, meetings, stakeholder management, and execution—without pretending PMs are superheroes or that every problem can be solved with a new framework. Built for IT project managers, business analysts and professionals who value discipline, clarity and realism over buzzwords.
HOSTED BY
Jordon Keen
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Project Management is Boring have?
Project Management is Boring currently has 49 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Project Management is Boring about?
Project Management Is Boring focuses on the unglamorous work that actually makes projects succeed. We talk planning, requirements, meetings, stakeholder management, and execution—without pretending PMs are superheroes or that every problem can be solved with a new framework. Built for IT project...
How often does Project Management is Boring release new episodes?
Project Management is Boring has 49 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Project Management is Boring?
You can listen to Project Management is Boring on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Project Management is Boring?
Project Management is Boring is created and hosted by Jordon Keen.
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