About the Author

Oliver F. Lehmann was born in 1957 in Stuttgart, Germany. He has studied Linguistics, Literature, and History at the University of Stuttgart and Project Management at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he holds a Master of Science Degree. He had practiced project management for more than 12 years, mostly for the automotive industry and related trades, when he decided to make a change and become a trainer, speaker, and author in 1995. Among his customers are international companies such as Airbus, DB Schenker Logistics, Microsoft, Olympus, and Deutsche Telekom, and he has had assignments as a trainer in Asia, Europe, and the United States. He works for several training providers and is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Technical University of Munich. Oliver Lehmann is frequently invited to speak at congresses and other events, where he motivates his audience to open up to the incredible diversity found in project management around the world, and to the new experiences that await discovery by project managers.

Among Oliver’s diverse certifications is the PMP^® certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI) in Newtown Square, PA (USA), which he obtained in the year 2001. In 2009, he acquired the prestigious CLI-CA (Certified Associate) certification issued by CLI, the Connective Leadership Institute in Pasadena, CA (USA), which is held by only a small number of people.

Oliver has been a member and volunteer at PMI since 1998 and currently serves as President of the PMI Munich Chapter. Between 2004 and 2006, he contributed as an analyst for troubled projects to PMI’s PM Network magazine, for which he provided the monthly editorial on page 1 called “Launch”, analyzing troubled projects all around the world.

Oliver F. Lehmann believes in three driving forces for personal improvement in project management: formal learning, experience, and observation. He considers the last one often overlooked, but important, because attentive project managers do not need to make all the errors themselves—they also learn from the errors of their colleagues.