New PM Articles for the Week of April 28 – May 4

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Windowshopping NewsboysNew project management articles published on the web during the week of April 28 – May 4. We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to! Recommended:

Portfolio Management

  • Patti Gilchrist makes the case for strategic portfolio management.
  • Martin Webster continues his series on leadership models with a look at the art of strategy.
  • Andy Jordan puts portfolio-level risk management into perspective.
  • Kenneth Darter tells why portfolio-level status reporting is different from project status reporting.
  • Dave Wakeman notes the importance of setting realistic goals for our projects.

PM Best Practices

  • Glen Alleman enumerates the elements of project success – project efficiency, impact on customer, business success, and preparing for the future.
  • Bruce Benson looks at the failure of the state-level health insurance exchanges, where it is becoming obvious that the big-name technology experts blew it.
  • John Podesta led a working group to provide recommendations on Big Data to President Obama. Big Government is forming an opinion on all of this potential for good and mischief!
  • Elizabeth Harrin presents her project management news round-up for April.
  • Chuck Morton provides the right answer to the age-old question, “What is the most important skill to develop to be a successful project manager?”
  • Gina Abudi presents a case study on managing a last minute push for a plainly valuable addition to scope.
  • Cynthia Owens looks at how people respond to change.
  • Ron Rosenhead celebrates writing 400 blog posts with a list of links to what he feels are his top ten. My favorite is #7!
  • Ralf Finchett applies the Jedi Code to project management.

Agile Methods

  • Johanna Rothman has been gaining experience as a customer/ product owner, with a new project: a house remodel, with an agile builder.
  • Madhavi Ledalla has put together quite a toolkit for keeping retrospectives lively. Nice work!
  • Mike Cohn tells us when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em – in planning poker, that is.
  • John Goodpasture enumerates the varieties of scope creep in Agile.
  • Mathew Squair admits that the Agilistas have a point about the futility of detailed plans when building “novel” software under conditions of uncertainty. No foolin’?

Podcast Interviews

  • Dave Prior interviews Jabe Bloom, who advocates Real Options Theory. Just 24 minutes, safe for work.
  • Cesar Abeid interviews Patrick Snow, on publishing your book. Just over an hour, safe for work.
  • Craig Smith interviews Kenny Rubin, author of “Essential Scrum.” Just 15 minutes, safe for work.

Pot Pouri

  • Cheri Baker has invented the seven-day weekend! Well, OK: she’s made a few changes to five days she wasn’t enjoying …
  • Michael Lopp shares his extensive preparation routine for giving presentations to large groups of strangers.
  • Venkatesh Krishnamurthy shares an example of a leader creating a negative culture.
  • Francis Hooke looks at business strategy in three parts: pinpointing goals, building a plan to reach them, and performing on the plan.

Enjoy!