project management influencers

Whether you are an aspiring project manager or working in the project management field, getting PM insights from several sources are essential. Not necessarily books or materials are the only sources to learn about project management. In the dominance of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn work as great resources. Interestingly you can learn a lot from the most popular project management influencers through social media and their websites. Moreover, the real-life experiences of such top influencers in project management provide invaluable help regarding knowledge sharing.

The discussions and information shared from these project management thought leaders innovatively infuse others to find solutions for problems. However, the list of such project management influencers is long, and it is impossible to follow them all. Hence, we have compiled a list of top 20 project management influencers, a mix of individual personality and organizations, and could be an excellent help to anyone in PMP, PMI-ACP, Agile, or any other specific project management/leadership stream.

Let’s go through the blog and follow them as part of your journey of project management.

Related post – 10 Agile certifications to take your career to the next level

1. Terri Bauman 

Every business is a project, and if you look from an entrepreneur’s perspective, Terri Bauman is the most popular project management influencers on social media. Terri is a well-known and popular figure in social media as a social media marketer, social media expert, and also as Internet Manager. She works as a private social media marketer for many websites and teaches people about the social media business, motivating people in individual leadership. Terri provides many valuable ideas on entrepreneurship through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Not only guidance on online money income, but her posts are also a great source to get updates on social media job opportunities.

2. Michael Kaplan 

3. Project Management Institute

PMI is the top project management influencer from its project management training and certifications perspectives. Their certifications are globally recognized, and its membership association is well accepted for the project management profession. Not only for certifications and training, but PMI is also a good source of information on project management learning through their podcasts, webinars, blogs, network, and many more. If you want to get the latest industry updates on project management, following the PMI Twitter account is necessary.

4. Thomas Kennedy

One of the top influencers in project management is Thomas Kennedy, popularly known as the PM Coach. He is among the top 100 management experts on Twitter who has helped multiple organizations with Business analysis, IT project, and program management. His blog http://thepmcoach.blogspot.com/ shares valuable tips and information on project management and leadership.

5. Bob Sutton  

Bob Sutton takes the first spot in the list of top project management influencers for his passion for project management science. He is a professor at Stanford and an organizational psychologist. This academically oriented personality tries to teach project management from a theoretical point of view. His website https://www.bobsutton.net contains tons of guides on management through blogs, articles, books, podcasts, and many more. He is also the author of the best-selling books “Good Boss Bad Boss” and “Scaling Up Excellence.“

6. Michael Krigsman

Michael Krigsman is among the top project management influencers whose work has been discussed in all sorts of media over 1000 times. The founder of cxotalk.com is internationally recognized for industry analysis, which sources conversations on leadership, digital disruption, and innovation with top leaders across industries. He has also published blogs on ZDNet.com.

7. Sharlyn Lauby

Sharlyn Lauby is the president of South Florida-based training and human resources consulting firm ITM Group Inc. She is a focused person who works closely with companies to develop strategic relationships with talent. She is an author and writer and owns the website HR Bartender, which focuses on employee engagement, leadership, and career advice. Her versatile talent on workplace social media, recruitment, and strategic planning places her on the list of top influencers in project management. She has authored and published the below books:

  • The Recruiter’s Handbook – A Complete Guide for Sourcing, Selecting and Engaging the Best TalentManager Onboarding: 5 Steps for Setting New Leaders Up for Success
  • Essential Meeting Blueprints for Managers
  • Motivating Employees in the Digital Age
  • It’s All About Bob(bie): Strategies for Winning With Your Employees
  • 7 Types of Power: Using Power Effectively Within Organizations (FREE ebook)
  • The ASTD Management Development Handbook
  • Motivating Employees

8. Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is an American author, speaker, and among those project management thought leaders who have contributed some best-selling books on project management. Making Things Happen is the famous one among them. He is a diverse talent who is at a time well versed in philosophy and computer science and also taught creativity. He has worked for many techno giants like Microsoft, Google, Word press, and many more. His website http://scottberkun.com/ provides lots of information on diverse topics through blog and interactions and on his books.

9. Jurgen Appelo

When we talk about project management influencers, the name Jurgen Appelo comes for his creative thinking on project management. This Dutch personality is one of the project management thought leaders who are well known as “creative networkers.” Inc.com has recognized him among the Top 50 Leadership Expert and also among Top 100 Leadership Speaker. His style of offering to the organizations is unique as it sometimes comes as a mode of a game, tool, or practice, which offers fewer managers and more management. This indeed enables organizations with leadership and helps to survive them in the world of business. 

He is a blogger and writer too and has authored the below books:

  • Management 3.0
  • How to Change the World 
  • Managing for Happiness

His website is a stock of interesting content about project management practices. Jürgen’s upcoming book Startup, Scaleup, Screwup, will be a good source of information on Lean and Agile Business Growth for the new generation of founders.  

10. Lindsay Scott

Suppose you are a newbie in project management and seeking career advice in PMO and project management. In that case, following Lindsay among the project management influencers may be the right choice for you. By profession, she is the Director of Project Management Recruitment business at Arras People and also a writer who shares much information on leadership and career advice like resume writing and interview tips. Besides, she is the co-editor of the book named Handbook of People in PM. 

11. Cornelius Fichtner

12. Bill Mabry

Bill Mabry is the Director, CSG Digital Transformation PMO at Salesforce. He is a visionary leader in establishing next-generation PMO and directs how PM methods are being used in all the levels of an organization apart from the core project management. At Salesforce, he has built the CSG PMO for Digital Transformation from scratch to establish a new agile framework with IT’s help. He is the founder of High-end PM, one of the most influential discussion forums on Twitter, connecting the world’s leading program and project management influencers.

13. Susanne Madsen

Susanne Madsen is one of the prominent figures among the project management influencers. She runs project management workshops for different famous organizations, for example, Citigroup, Danoe, ExxonMobil, Continental, etc. Author of the two books, The Project Management Coaching Workbook and The Power of Project Leadership, this enthusiastic personality is undoubtedly one of the among those project management thought leaders who have successfully coached, trained, and motivated several project managers and their respective teams to add values for their organizations. 

Susanne’s website https://www.susannemadsen.co.uk provides plenty of resources on project management in the form of a blog, webinars, podcasts, and videos. If you are a regular follower of YouTube, you can get valuable information from her project management videos, which she publishes regularly.

14. Carlos J. Pampliega

Carlos J. Pampliega is among the top influencers in project management from an international reputation perspective. An architect and project manager by profession, he is the Director of Project Management Program at CEU Business School and a keynote speaker. Carlos is also a member of PMI Madrid-Spain Board of Directors. His own business website Salinero Pampliega Project Management, helps organizations to grow with change and innovation through services and information shared in the blog. Besides, it helps in project management training. You can get many valuable insights on project management from his posts on politics, news, and events on project management on social media.

15. Peter Taylor

If you are keen about knowing how to work smart and not hard and yet achieve the same success in project management, you must follow Peter Taylor among the project management influencers. The head of global PMO at Aptos Retail, Peter has authored 17 books on project management. The Lazy Project Manager and Productive Laziness are the bestselling books in the world of project management. 

16. Ron Rosenhead

One of the prominent international project management influencers and consultant Ron Rosenhead works as a consultant for companies to deliver the projects more effectively. The co-author of the book Strategies for Project Sponsorship plays versatile roles, sometimes as a speaker or a trainer. He is also famous for developing in-house project management strategies, speaker at management conferences and meetings. 

17. Brad Egeland

Brad is from an IT background. With over 25 years as a developer, project manager, consultant, and author, he has created a significant niche of project management resources online. His stock of writing has crossed over 5000 online articles, video articles, and eBooks. He is considered one of the leading project management influencers and ranked 1 in the 100 Most Inspiring People in the domain of Project Management. His style of writing project management topics and subtly makes him distinguishable. 

18. Dave Gordon

If you are in IT project management, then one of the top project management influencers in this stream is Dave Gordon. He is a project manager with over twenty years of experience and worked on ERP solutions, human capital management, and payroll systems implementations.

His website, The Practicing IT Project Manager, is a good source of the latest information and innovation on IT project management. You can get weekly updates on blogs and articles on this website. Interestingly, his collection of blogs from multiple sources covers a wide range of IT project management trends and topics, which undoubtedly proves that he is one of the best project management influencers. 

He is also the author of the following books 

  • The Data Conversion Cycle describes migrating transactions along with other record systems. 
  • Microsoft Project Hacks is an expanded and collected topic from his blog The Practicing IT Project Manager MS project and published in pdf format.
  • Waterfall To Agile – An downloadable eBook
  • 52 Tips to Break Into Project Management – An downloadable eBook
  • How to Be a Good Project Manager – An eBook
  • PM Flashblog 2013 – An eBook

19. Mike Griffiths

Mike Griffiths is a well-known name in agile project management. He is PMP and PRINCE2 certifications holder and professionally an independent project manager and consultant. Besides agile project management, Mike is actively working on traditional project management too. Besides his work on project management, he has also authored and contributed to PMBOK v3 and v6 guides.

Griffiths is also a trainer who frequently attends PMI Global Congress conferences and teaches the 2-day course on “Agile Project Management,” a part of the PMI program. He also helped start the largest PMI community – PMI Agile Community of Practice, which now has over 8000 members worldwide.

20. Elizabeth Harrin

Elizabeth Harrin is an award-winning writer on project management and is considered one of the best project management influencers on social media. Harrin focuses on leadership, project management, and productivity. This London based personality is the director of Otobos Consultants Ltd, which is a communication consulting firm. Besides being the director of @otobosgroup, she is the program manager with a decade of experience in healthcare and financial services. 

She is the author of the below books that reflect her commendable personality among project management thought leaders:

  • Social Media for Project Managers(2010)
  • Customer-Centric Project Management(2012)
  • Project Management In The Real World(2007)

Her internationally recognized blog named A Girls Guide to Project Management, for which she has received several awards and accolades from different sources provides up-to-date and real-world solutions in project management. Besides, it has a community of project managers where you can find a lot of information through discussions. She also runs two other blogs named Talking Work and The Money Files.

This youngest woman FAPM (Fellow of the Association for Project Management) achiever focuses and inspires woman leadership project management. Hence, if you are a female leader of the future, you must follow her on Twitter.

Final Words: 

If you are preparing for project management certifications, then following the social media accounts of top project management influencers will give you extra feed in your preparation.

 

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