New PM Articles for the Week of March 21 – 27

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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!