New PM Articles for the Week of July 18 – 24

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of July 18 – 24. And this week’s video: the maiden flight of Aquila, Facebook’s solar-powered unmanned aircraft, designed to bring internet connectivity to the rest of the world. Just three minutes, safe for work.

Must read!

  • Harry Hall describes several responses that project managers might make to respond to stakeholder conflict – not all of them good.
  • Paul Culmsee and his kids prepared a four-minute video they call “A TEDdy Talk,” explaining his new book with Kailash Awati, “The Heretic’s Guide to Management.” Safe for work.
  • PMI announced that the PMBOK Guide-Sixth Edition, with extended coverage of Agile methods, and a practice guide focused on Agile will be released during the third quarter of 2017.

Established Methods

  • Elizabeth Harrin makes the argument that contributions to organizational strategic goals are a more useful project metric than alignment with those strategic goals.
  • Stuart Easton describes the annual project budgeting process as a “beauty parade,” and challenges the PMO to define value.
  • Priyanka Chakraborty reports that IT project failure rates are essentially unchanged from three years ago. If we can’t be good, let’s at least be predictable?
  • John Goodpasture expands on a quote from Tony Hoare to explore the inductive nature of software testing.
  • PMI has made their Pulse of the Profession 2016 report available for download. Title: “Delivering Value: Focus on benefits during project execution.”
  • Mike Griffiths models the business case for when software development outsourcing makes sense.
  • Glen Alleman shares his reading list of systems engineering textbooks.
  • Keith Foote gives us a primer on Big Data and cloud security.

Agile Methods

  • Johanna Rothman posted a two-part series on how to get to a frictionless release. Here’s part 2.
  • Dave Prior interviews Liana Dore, Agile Governance lead for eVestment, on the Agile PMO. Just 26 minutes, safe for work.
  • Mike Cohn addresses the question posed by the #NoProjects folks.
  • Lance Knight recounts a tale of two Scrum teams: one with a ScrumMaster who understood team dynamics, and one … well, you get the idea.
  • Natalie Warnert notes that even software teams grieve at the end of their projects.

Applied Leadership

  • David Robins offers some thoughts on managing remote workers, from processes and tools to characteristics of people who can and cannot work well remotely.
  • Kathleen O’Connor interviews former HR executive Larry Solomon on his new book, “Translate, Motivate, Activate: A Leader’s Guide to Mobilizing Change.”
  • Michael Lopp announces coming release of the third edition of “Managing Humans.”
  • Bas de Baat lists the actions needed to get a team “in the zone.”

Working and the Workplace

  • Microsoft announced the Microsoft Professional Degree program, “A university caliber curriculum for professionals at any stage in their career.”
  • Kristin Hillery collected ideas on maintaining work-life balance from a number of folks who work from offices in their home.
  • Elise Stevens interviews Jane Anderson on using LinkedIn to build your personal brand. Just 24 minutes, safe for work.
  • Suzanne Lucas briefs us on compliance with the new overtime regulations here in the US.
  • Steven Pressfield lists ten classic books on productivity, old and new.

Enjoy!