New project management articles published on the web during the week of December 19 – 25. And this week’s video: making a gingerbread house, starring Abby. Less than four minutes, safe for work.

Must read!

• Tim Urban shares the best advice he’s ever been given, from no less an authority than Chris Anderson, the man who heads the TED Talks organization.
• Joseph Grenny shares an anecdote that illustrates the need to control our emotions in tense moments.
• Michael Lopp captures the spirit of the holiday season with a story about the hole where his Dad buried their Christmas presents.

Established Methods

• Moira Alexander tutors us on how to write a more effective project charter.
• Henny Portman listed links to all 44 of the book reviews he’s published this year. A mix of English and Dutch, so it’s not 44 books. But still, there’s something here for you!
• Mike Clayton didn’t get the chance to read as much as he hoped in 2016, so this list of 15 books contains his aspirations for 2017.
• Joe Wynne starts a series on managing organizational change in HR projects.
• Harry Hall points out the ways we can create schedule risks, often by trying to resolve existing schedule issues.

Agile Methods

• Johanna Rothman talks up the merits of rolling wave planning for backlogs and product roadmaps.
• Cornelius Fichtner interviews Andy Burns on scaling Agile and adaptive project management processes at scale. Just 32 minutes, safe for work.
• Andrew Makar considers how to align PMO processes with Agile methods. If you see the boulevard as a road block, maybe you’re going the wrong way.
• Dave Prior and Richard Cheng shared their first podcast, intended to provide tips for new Scrum Masters. Just 34 minutes, safe for work.
• Eric An explains the maintainability rules for cascading style sheets. Yes, that was an example of rhetorical recursion.
• The Clever PM provides a summary and link to each of his ten most popular posts of 2016. Good stuff here – at least take a look, even if you’re not a product manager.

Applied Leadership

• Jesse Lyn Stoner walks us through an ethics check, in the event we’re faced with a situation that seems neither black nor white.
• Lisette Sutherland interviews David Mansilla, CEO of 100% remote software development firm ISU Corp, on trust and transparency. Just 32 minutes, safe for work.
• Doug Thorpe introduces us to Jia Jiang, who decided to desensitize himself to rejection by actively seeking it out for 100 days, straight. Naturally, there is a TED talk: 16 minutes, safe for work.

Technology and Techniques

• Bertrand Duperrin suggests that the Uber model – positioning oneself as a broker between the provider and its clients – might be short-lived.
• Keith Foote provides an overview of the differences between relational and non-relational databases and includes a link to a video presentation with more details.
• Brendan Toner provides a detailed review and examples of what we project managers can do with iMindMap.

Working and the Workplace

• Stephanie Lee shares the lessons she learned from working remotely, all around the world.
• Kat Boogaard coaches us on making our elevator pitch memorable.
• Oliver Burkeman recounts the history of our embrace of efficiency and time management and points out the reason it’s ruining our lives.
• Victor Tan Chen reports on the growing spiritual crisis of living in what can be an extreme meritocracy.
• Aimee Groth gets us up to speed on why holocracy is failing at Zappos and was abandoned at Medium: we’re human, and we’re better at feeling than thinking.

Enjoy!