New PM Articles for the Week of July 21 – 27

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SaladNew project management articles published on the web during the week of July 21 – 27. We gather all of this stuff so you don’t have to search for it! Recommended:

The Project Management Office

  • James Terry begins a new series, outlining a blueprint for creating a technology PMO.
  • Aaron Smith summarizes a research report from PM Solutions on the State of the PMO, 2014.
  • Kiron Bondale asks whether we should centralize measurement and tracking of project benefits realized.
  • Gina Abudi (bullet) points out criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the enterprise PMO.
  • Elizabeth Harrin recounts her experience as a one-woman PMO for a team of four project managers.

PM Best Practices

  • Alan Garvey describes parametric estimating, bottom-up estimating, and analogous estimating.
  • Troy Blake explains the Cone of Uncertainty, which describes the improving accuracy of estimates as the project progresses.
  • Otto Scharmer reports on results from MIT’s IDEAS China program, principally on the difference between Big Data and Deep Data.
  • Steven Levy reminds us that the cool results of our internal projects probably don’t matter all that much to our external clients.
  • Glen Alleman explains project management as a closed-loop control system.
  • John Goodpasture shares a diagram from Jurgen Appelo that intersects reactions to success and failure from mistakes, experiments, and practices. Thinking required!
  • Kerry Wills comes up with yet another sports metaphor. This time: spectators yelling at the team on the field don’t actually change the outcome.

Agile Methods

  • Johanna Rothman is assembling the Minimum Agile Reading List, and seeking recommendations.
  • Sondra Ashmore and Kristin Runyan have apparently published the first university textbook for a course in Agile methods. Not sure if that is a good sign or a bad sign.
  • Chris Moody critiques the criticism, “That’s not Agile.”
  • Mike Cohn criticizes the now-common two-week sprint, as too short to try anything truly innovative.
  • David Anderson explains how to tell if you are really doing Kanban, or just going through the motions.

Lean Agile Melbourne 2014

  • Venkatesh Krishnamurthy reports from the Lean Agile Systems Thinking 2014 conference in Melbourne, and shares the slide deck from his Agile Coaching presentation.
  • Craig Brown shares the results of a workshop from the same conference, where the participants used the Six Thinking Hats to examine product backlogs.
  • Shim Marom reflects on the theme of the conference, “embracing disruption,” and wonders if Agile is now too mainstream to be disruptive.

Professional Development

  • Scott Berkun summarizes what we know about changing our habits.
  • Ian Whittingham asks a pointed question: how much experience in project management is required for mastery?
  • Coert Visser shares an interesting presentation on saying “no” effectively, without damaging either the relationship or our own interests.
  • Kevin Kelly tells us that this is just the beginning of the beginning, and that boundless opportunities await us. Just like thirty years ago.

Enjoy!

5 thoughts on “New PM Articles for the Week of July 21 – 27”

  1. Thank you for sharing Steven Levy’s article on internal projects. Some projects I’ve seen like this are difficult to get excited about. His example of rebuilding an internal website is a great illustration of a less than exciting project.

  2. Glad you liked it, Bruce. By the way, I’d like to link to your articles at Project Management Hacks, and it would help if I had your last name. I don’t see your full name referenced anywhere on the site.

  5. Thanks for your support, Cheri! I always look forward to your next post at The Enlightened Manager.

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