New PM Articles for the Week of June 30 – July 6

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Gathering ClamsNew project management articles published on the web during the week of June 30 – July 6. We gather all of this stuff so you don’t have to search for it! Recommended:

Risk Management

  • Andy Jordan consider the decision whether to manage risks at the program level or push them down to the project level.
  • Nittin Mittal identifies the top eight risks in Agile projects.
  • Matthew Squair prepared a hazard checklist for a course he was teaching, and decided to share it with us. It’s an interesting list of risk sources!
  • Ron Rosenhead asked the class in one of his project management courses what goes wrong in their projects. Yup, more sources of risk!

PM Best Practices

  • Pawel Brodzinski challenges the default option of “grow” with an alternative: preserve the culture.
  • Elizabeth Harrin reviews “The Presentation Book,” by Emma Ledden.
  • Robert Wysocki and Joseph Matthews continue their series on the Occasional PM, with a look at three types of projects they are likely to encounter.
  • Glen Alleman reminds us that the ability to release software faster than the business operating rhythm will allow the changes to be absorbed is not very valuable.
  • Johanna Rothman recounts a story of her encounter with a manager who discouraged his people from bringing him problems.
  • Martin Webster continues his series on leadership models with a detour into motivation theories, and John Adair’s Action Centered Leadership model.
  • Brett Beaubouef suggests that we should earn the right to challenge the requirements we elicit from our customers.
  • Chuck Morton continues his series on deconstructing project management with a look at the nature of program management.

Agile Methods

  • Bob Tarne notes the biggest challenge for organizations embracing Agile methods for the first time: the time commitment required for business people.
  • Mike Cohn provides interesting examples of “decorating” user roles in user stories, by adding simple (but meaningful) adjectives.
  • Jesse Fewell finds a better tool for representing Scrum roles and responsibilities than the RACI chart: an “Owns-Helps” chart.
  • Craig Brown shares an interesting diagram that helps explain what practices play to the strengths of different cultures.
  • John Goodpasture explains why Agile is, by nature if not in practice, a recursive methodology.
  • Venkatesh Krishnamurthy tells a simple story of two waste bins that speaks volumes about changing behavior.

Working Smarter

  • Mike Donoghue has a few tips for the traveling IT consultant. Or as I classify myself, the migrant computer worker.
  • Sonia Liang wants to help you quit an anti-productive habit: multi-tasking.
  • Alina Vrabie explains why Inbox Zero is so hard to reach, and nearly impossible to maintain.
  • Suzanne Lucas points to some recent research that debunks a few meeting collaboration “tricks.”

Podcasts and Videos

  • Cesar Abeid interviews Roy Gatling, on his experiences at a fast-growing firm (Dell) trying to perfect the practice of project management. Just 51 minutes, safe for work.
  • Soma Bhattacharya shares a TED talk by Kelly McGonigal on tiny interventions to develop willpower that she found particularly useful. Just 54 minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!