New project management articles published on the web during the week of January 21 – 27.  Dave and Sandra read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

• Andrea Brockmeier, Elizabeth Larson, and Richard Larson list some “competency trends” they see developing for PM’s and BA’s.
• Elizabeth Harrin shares some ideas from her new book, “Customer-Centric Project Management.”
• Woody Walker reminds us of five traits of good communicators.
• Kailash Awati explores the differences between communication and pseudo-communication in organizations.
• Michiko Diby asks, “Are you an IT adviser PM, or an IT push-backer PM?”
• Vaughan Merlyn analyzes why typically Outsourcers deliver better project performance than in-house resources and shares his conclusions on how to improve in-house delivery.
• Ken Hardin shares some observations gained from working with a new customer to re-vamp the design of their business website.
• Colby Stream thinks we should broaden our knowledge base – not by learning more about IT, but about how our customers expect to use it.
• Roland Hoffman says we can mitigate against our biases by understanding the sources of them.
• Timothy F Bednarz contrasts Leaders and Managers in “Active Leadership Takes Courage, Passion and Conviction”.
• Andrew Mcafee thinks the “Myth of Technological Unemployment” is starting to look more like a reality.
• Ted Hardy expounds on what should go into a great bug report.  No, really!
• Roz Baker is looking forward to migrating to the latest version of Sharepoint.
• Will Kelly gives us the high points of Microsoft’s Project 2013 project portfolio management Software as a Service offering.
• Craig Brown shares a “magic quadrant with trend lines” model from Noriaka Kana as a possible tool for project portfolio management.
• Sarah Perez notes that BaseCamp is now available in a “Personal” version, with various functional limits and only five collaborators, for $25 per project.
• Kathleen Welton shares how to master the art of Timeboxing. Hint…it starts with identifying priorities.
• Bob Tarne advocates for refactoring by design.  “The key is to plan to the appropriate level of detail.”
• Kelsey van Haaster continues his series on chess as a metaphor for business analysis.
• Shim Marom looks at failure-as-a-good-outcome, in articles from Doug Sundheim, Amy Edmundson, and Joshua Gans.
• Laua Burford considers the characteristics of the “flat” organization, and how project managers can effectively lead in them.
• Joe Wynne shares how to support the introverts on your project team by awareness and adjustment of message delivery.
• Dan Waldschmidt says it’s our attitude that determines whether or not we’ll succeed.
• Peter Saddington has accumulated quite a reading backlog, so he’s applying Agile estimating techniques to … well, I guess everything is an Agile project now.
• Don Kim posts a seven minute video introduction to Kanban by Gemba Academy. Safe for work.
• PMI posted a ten-part video interview with board member Beth Partleton, on women in project management.  Each around two minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!