New PM Articles for the Week of September 18 – 24

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of September 18 – 24. And this week’s video: two Scottish men try to communicate with a voice-activated elevator. My Taiwan-born wife laughed so hard I thought she’d require CPR. Just under 4 minutes, more-or-less safe for work.

Must read!

  • Derek Beres explains how reading changes your brain, increasing intelligence and empathy. Which is why you read these weekly round-ups, right? 5 minutes to read, four short videos embedded.
  • Rich Maltzman and Dave Shirley report on the growth of Sustainable and Responsible Investment, using the Seychelles as an example. Deals like this always create new projects. 4 minutes to read.
  • John Goodpasture opines on the relationship between precision and accuracy and two schools of practice—one of objectivity and one of subjectivity. 2 minutes to read.

Established Methods

  • Harry Hall tells how to conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis and apply the findings to your risk management activities. 2 minutes to read.
  • PMI released two new in-depth reports—one on achieving agility (32 pages) and one on the drivers of agility (16 pages). Note that “Agile” and agility are not the same thing.
  • Michelle Symonds explains why the “triple constraint” ignores all other constraints and points out some of the others we will encounter. 4 minutes to read, one embedded video.
  • Laura Paton debunks five myths about PMI’s business analysis certification. Laura had key roles in developing both the PMI standard for business analysis and the BABOK Guide. 7 minutes to read.
  • Cheryl Texiera gets down to the gritty details of creating consistent documentation for your project. 3 minutes to read.
  • Chris Matts begins a series describing the three levels of metric maturity. 2 minutes to read.

Agile Methods

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from the roles of change (agitate, innovate, orchestrate) to systems thinking, to the case for teams to self-select. 11 outbound links, 3 minutes to scan.
  • Mike Cohn explores the two ways in which a team can add detail to a user story: splitting and adding acceptance criteria. 6 minutes to read.
  • John Cutler presents some background on the story points debate and then suggests some alternative metrics. 4 minutes to read.
  • Tamás Török presents a scientific approach to prioritizing software development requirements. 4 minutes to read.
  • David Vicentin explains how Six Sigma projects can apply Agile techniques and values. 2 minutes to read.
  • Arthur Moore presents the Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) notion of the perfect definition of done. 3 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Harry McCracken reports on the success of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in changing the culture at Microsoft, resulting in a dazzling improvement in their prospects. 20 minutes to read.
  • Robert Kaiser, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, and Derek Lusk guide us in learning to play office politics ethically and effectively. 5 minutes to read.
  • Art Petty reminds us that while results certainly matter, leaders need to get them sustainably to be effective. 4 minutes to read.
  • Christopher Chabris provides brief reviews of four recent books on different aspects of decision-making, behavior, and influence, authored by researchers in the fields. 4 minutes to read.

Technology, Techniques, and Human Behavior

  • Tom Warren reports that the forces of evil managed to hide botnet malware in the CCleaner app that has been downloaded more than 2 billion times. 2 minutes to read.
  • Dan Patterson and Emily Wilson discuss the details of the Equifax breach, including the revelation that the company directed victims to a phishing website for support. Incredible … 7 minutes, safe for work.
  • Febin John James reveals that artificial intelligence can be used to guess passwords because humans are predictable. But, you knew that. 3 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • Geoff Crane identifies four distinct skills, based on the trait model of emotional intelligence, that will allow us to thrive in the “gig economy.” 4 minutes to read.
  • Leigh Espy coaches us on preparing for project management behavioral interview questions and even shares a list of 40 samples. 10 minutes to read.
  • Kailash Awati notes that “no one actually experiences time as it is depicted in a timeline.” The level of engagement makes time seem to go faster or slower. 6 minutes to read, although it might seem like 2 or 3.

Enjoy!

Title
New PM Articles for the Week of September 18 – 24
Article Name
New PM Articles for the Week of September 18 – 24
Description
New project management articles published on the web during the week of September 18 – 24
Author
The Practicing IT Project Manager LLC