New project management articles published on the web during the week of October 24 – 30, 2011. We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to! Recommended:
- Eric Willeke starts a four-part series on applying Kanban to software development projects.
- Craig Brown shares a video of Jim Benson, the author of “Personal Kanban,” talking about why Kanban works. Excellent, and safe for work.
- Peter Saddington shares a video on Kanban, as practiced at your local Starbucks, and how it’s applied to Scrum. Safe for work.
- Also from Peter: a development process flow, with zombies.
- Elizabeth Harrin had a chance to chat with Dave Shirley, co-author of “Green Project Management” and winner of the Cleland Award for PM Literature.
- Terry Bunio thinks we need to be more specific: are we talking about Agile product management, or Agile project management?
- Mike Griffiths talks about using Actor Network Theory to measure project success, and illustrates with two different dome construction projects.
- Eddie Williams is concerned that the IT industry is accepting failure as the norm, and he has some recommendations.
- Bruce Benson talks about eagles, sparrows, and turkeys, and why you should spend more of your time on the turkeys.
- Kerry Willis talks about why escalation should be a last resort.
- Jason Hiner shares the key points from a presentation by Gartner Group analyst Ken McGee. It’s a somewhat radical assessment of where IT needs to go, and what need to stop, right now!
- Chip Camden wants to remind us that computer systems are deterministic in nature, and we need to get to the root cause, not just offer “explanations.”
- Glen Alleman says a good work breakdown structure should be “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.”
- Cyndee Miller has some of the details behind the “Watson” project that beat the two greatest Jeopardy champions in history at their own game.
- Mike Beard shares a simple self-rating test for leadership, using the characteristics considered for selecting the Chief Executive of the Year by Chief Executive magazine.
- Nucleus Research released its report on the top ten tech trends for 2012.
- The Association for Project Management held their project management awards banquet last week, and chairman Mike Nichols shared an uncompromising vision: “All projects succeed.”
- Mike Inman shares his thoughts on where procurement can improve – by trusting suppliers.
- Bruce McGraw says the PMBOK is like Wikipedia. Well, the part about it being developed by volunteers who each contributed their expertise.
- Geoff Crane relates hostage negotiation to project management. Well, the part about influencing behavior.
Enjoy!