New project management articles published on the web during the week of July 16 – 22, 2012.  Dave and Sandra read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

• Brian Bozzuto explains, “A good agile project blends two key capabilities: an ability to change with an ability to rapidly learn.”
• Elizabeth Harrin gives us a high-level view of the project management challenges faced in building the Olympic Park in London.
• Joel Bancroft-Connors and Hogarth consider Yet Another Firefox Iteration, and note that some of the loudest complainers are Agile practitioners.
• Jim De Piante wants us to stick to the basics.  “Don’t let the allure of the sophisticated or the novel, distract us from the value of fundamentals.”
• Mike Donoghue reflects on the old adage, “for want of a nail.”  We’re project managers – we get paid to sweat the details.
• Andrea Brockmeier wants us to sit down with our project sponsor and put together the list of absolute must-haves, from this sponsor, for this project.
• Glen Alleman repeats John Goodpasture’s criteria for knowing whether you’re actually doing risk management.
• Jordan Bortz summarizes a new report on Agile from analyst firm Voke, Inc.  “The Agile movement is designed to sell services,” they say.  Food fight!
• Shlomo Sprung recaps the late Stephen Covey’s “& Habits of Highly Effective People.  Dr. Covey passed away this week at 79.
• Gia Costella interviews PBT Group program manager Andreas Bartsch, who explains why business intelligence is key to successful project management
• Patrick Gray explains that IT is becoming less about technical skills than about architecting solutions from readily available services.
• Peter Saddington offers some thoughts on being one of several Agile Coaches at one client site.
• Bruce McGraw says it isn’t a question of Waterfall versus Agile, but which blend of techniques is appropriate for the work at hand.
• Jesse Fewell argues for the transition to Big Agile, based on three key strategies.
• Johanna Rothman says, “If you start predicting velocity and you start predicting which stories a team can commit to, you are not doing agile. You are doing command-and-control in iterations.”
• Sam Palani has been leading complex enterprise initiatives using Agile for the last few months, and so he gives us his take on defining the Minimum Viable Product.
• Ted Hardy shares an anecdote that illustrates the power of … illustration.
• Kerry Wills shares his approach for managing issues.
• Michelle Symonds addresses success criteria, and how to know if your project has been successful.  Hint: it’s not about spending the right number of dollars.
• Jodi Ashbrook lists three keys to servant leadership.
• PMI announced the winners of their annual research awards at the 2012 Research and Education Conference in Limerick, Ireland.

Enjoy!