New project management articles published on the web during the week of March 21 – 27. And this week’s video: making an axe from rocks and sticks. As recently as 4,000 years ago, this was a common work activity in most human societies. Still think your software tools suck?
Must read!
- Cameron Conaway examines the New Discrimination: cultural fit, and notes that a better case can be made for cultural contribution in hiring decisions.
- Hope Reese reports on the rapidly expanding trend for companies to contract with knowledge workers in remote locations.
- Stuart Easton notes that collaboration has a potentially powerful down side: it can actually slow down decision making.
Established Methods
- Elizabeth Harrin goes beyond the stakeholder power-and-impact grid to explore real engagement, based on communication and collaboration.
- Ginger Levin interviews PMI Fellow Russ Archibald, who managed his first project 67 years ago and released a new book just last year.
- John Goodpasture reflects on an old blog article at Random Rule of Thumb, adapting the Five Stages of Grief to a model for accepting change.
- Paul Ritchie considers the dancing-angels question: how many simultaneous projects can one project manager handle?
- Glen Alleman explores the Venn Diagram of forecasting and estimating.
- Moira Alexander captures twelve questions you should prepare for, prior to your next project management interview.
- Deb Schaffer focuses on the problem set commonly encountered by the project manager in a small company.
- Ryan Ogilvie says that the key to a successful post-mortem is fearlessness. The worst has already happened …
Agile Methods
- Mike Griffiths expresses his reservations about Bi-Modal IT, as championed by the Gartner Group and others. It’s a continuum, not a choice of mutually exclusive extremes.
- Mike Cohn explains why Sprint planning doesn’t require all that much detail. Identify the big things and leave enough time to handle the little things.
- Rumesh Wijetunge shares some of the lessons his organization learned in their efforts to scale Agile.
- Patrick Sinke explains the benefits of microservices – strong decoupling in an SOA.
Applied Leadership
- Mike Sisco identifies three main culprits for IT failure: a disconnect with the business, poor communication, and project failures.
- Art Petty notes that leadership begins with personal development. “Self-confidence, self-esteem and clarity of purpose are fundamental to succeeding at leading.”
- Seth Godin: “In any competitive market, be prepared to invest your heart and soul and focus on the [attribute] you compete on. Might as well choose something you can live with.”
- Aaron Smith encapsulates a few insights from Patrick Stroh, author of “Advancing Innovation.”
- Norah Martin invokes some famous success stories to illustrate the idea that business growth and personal growth are closely intertwined.
- Elise Stevens interviews Heath Suddleson on finding a mentor and making the relationship work for both of you. Just 23 minutes, safe for work.
Pot Pouri
- Tiago Forte argues that, as we learn more about behavior change, we are realizing that there’s more to it than simply deciding to change our behavior.
- Coert Visser cites two recent studies of self-concordant (self-selected) goals, exploring the relationship between goal motivation and goal progress.
- Bertrand Duperrin makes the case for the intranet as a digital workplace for all employees – not just white collar workers.
- Peter Thornycroft points out the administrative challenge of providing secure, reliable wireless connectivity to devices that need to exchange data with the Cloud – the Internet of Things.
Enjoy!