New 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!
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.
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.
That’s great – thanks for including me!
My name is Bruce Harpham. 🙂
As always, an informative curated list. Thanks! 🙂
Thanks for your support, Cheri! I always look forward to your next post at The Enlightened Manager.