Tag Archives: Customer Communications

Articles related to communications with management, stakeholders, and project teams

New PM Articles for the Week of December 10 – 16

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of December 10 – 16. And this week’s video: Julia Dhar shares three techniques, honed in her experience as a world debate champion, that will help us disagree productively and find common ground. 15 minutes, safe for work.

Business Acumen and Strategy

  • Michael Grothaus reviews some of the biggest personal data breaches of 2018. 7 minutes to read. Also: The US House of Representatives report says that last year’s Equifax compromise was an entirely preventable consequence of rapid growth. 3 minutes to read.
  • Scott Matteson interviews Alexander Garcia-Tobar on the massive growth of business Email compromise (BEC) phishing attacks over the last year. 4 minutes to read.
  • Dina Bass reports that almost everyone involved in developing facial recognition technology sees problems. 5 minutes to read.

Managing Projects

  • Elizabeth Harrin curates her list of project management conferences coming up in 2019. 7 minutes to read.
  • Patrice Embry shares five project management lessons she learned in 2018. 7 minutes to read.
  • Chris Matts notes that cost of delay is only a valid element of some investment cost models. 2 minutes to read.
  • Mike Clayton shares the most comprehensive document on project documentation (oh, stop rolling your eyes) that you will ever read. File away for future reference. 12 minutes to read.
  • John Goodpasture comments on a new graphic by Jurgen Apello, relating behavior and outcome, success, failure, and learning. 2 minutes to read, but take two more to study,
  • Diana Hundley coaches us on how to apologize to your client when your team makes a significant error. 6 minutes to read.

Managing Software Development

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from “Taylorism Agility” to peaceful coexistence of agility and governance to debunking agile planning myths. 7 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Arthur Hicken explains the “shift-left” approach to software testing—moving software testing activities earlier in the development timeline. 6 minutes to read.
  • Nacho Bassino gives us some insight into estimating the value of the technical debt work we are contemplating. 5 minutes to read.
  • Michael Solomon tutors us on testing software security, from planning to deployment and maintenance. 5 minutes to read.
  • Tom Cagely is an advocate for story maps, except for some situations. Here is when they don’t make sense. 2 minutes to read.
  • Kristin Jackovny lists six steps to create an effective test report. 6 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Alexander Maasik curates his weekly list of leadership content, from setting short-term objectives to building engagement to why every team needs therapy. 5 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Gregg Johnson notes that the best leaders make fewer decisions, not more. 4 minutes to read.
  • Louis Chew explains the basics of principled negotiation: finding common ground without compromising. 8 minutes to read.
  • Leigh Espy tells us when and how to lead a productive brainstorming session. 9 minutes to read.

Research and Insights

  • Eric Mack curated predictions from 27 experts on how artificial intelligence will impact us in the next few years. Some of these read like pitches for horror films, but most are hopeful. 9 minutes to read.
  • Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, lists ten technologies that will change the world over the next ten years. 8 minutes to read.
  • Karen Hao reports on the implementation of a new approach to neural networks that better handles non-continuous data inputs. Nerdy but interesting. 6 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • Paolo Gallo and Peter Vanham suggest three ways to foster intergenerational harmony in the workplace. Given that there are now 5 generations in the workforce, this subject should resonate. 7 minutes to read.
  • Lysette Sutherland reviews the pros and cons of the various commonly used means that teams use for internal communication. Podcast, 13 minutes.
  • Enrique Dans confirms our worst fear: our password has been stolen. What matters is what we do next. 4 minutes to read.

Enjoy!

New PM Articles for the Week of September 24 – 30

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of September 24 – 30. And this week’s video: Mike Clayton defines projects and project management, in case your grandmother asks what you do for a living. 5 minutes, safe for work and for family gatherings.

Business Acumen and Strategy

  • Lila MacLellan summarizes a paper arguing that societal ills may have been exacerbated by using the Harvard Business School case study in business education. 10 minutes to read.
  • Kerry Jones explains “North Star” metrics—chosen to focus on some business result. Ultra-alignment requires excellent aim and the willingness to iterate. 8 minutes to read.
  • Gabor Nagy reports on an intriguing trend: companies are creating their own co-working spaces to expose their employees to other approaches. 7minutes to read.

Managing Projects

  • Cornelius Fichtner asks ten project management thought leaders what business management skills are essential for strategic projects. Podcast, 19 minutes, safe for work.
  • Leigh Espy shows us how to get the voice of the customer to be sure our project is on the right track. 8 minutes to read.
  • John Goodpasture provides alternatives to the evil % Complete OK, so it isn’t evil; merely misleading and maintenance-intensive. 2 minutes to read.
  • Glen Alleman extracts a key lesson on decision-making from Ralph Keeney’s new book, Value-Focused Thinking. 2 minutes to read.
  • Dmitriy Nizhebetskiy explores five effective communication channels and explains when to use them. 5 minutes to read.
  • Satya Narayan Dash shares a high-level overview of the differences between the PMBOK 5th Edition and the 6th Edition released last year. 9 minutes to read.
  • Elizabeth Harrin continues her Women in Project Management, interviewing Koviljka Lukic as she transitions from sales to project management. 5 minutes to read.

Managing Software Development

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from Toyota Scrum to preventing product failures to the Sunk Cost Fallacy. 7 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Kiron Bondale discourages us from asking the Scrum master to perform multiple roles. 2 minutes to read.
  • Johanna Rothman argues that product orientation requires high quality standards. 3 minutes to read.
  • Mike Cohn does a deep dive into the concept of potentially releasable. 5 minutes to read.
  • Andreas Prins points out four software delivery mistakes that negatively impact continuous delivery. 6 minutes to read.
  • Scott Kirkwood interviews Bonnie Jarvie, VP of User Experience Research at the Wall Street Journal on how the craft has changed in the last 20 years. 6 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Alexander Maasik curates his weekly list of leadership articles, from rallying employees to embrace change to the upside of boredom to communication in the design process. 5 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Linky van der Merwe selects seven skills that women (and men) aspiring to leadership positions need to consciously develop. 3 minutes to read.
  • Stephanie Ray provides a detailed description of holacracy, which carries the notion of self-organizing teams to its logical conclusion. 5 minutes to read.

Research and Insights

  • Yomi Kazeem updates us on work to get zinc-air batteries down below the $100 / kilowatt-hour price point for use with solar cells in developing countries. 2 minutes to read.
  • Nick Heath summarizes three key takeaways from a presentation by Demi Hassabis, co-founder of Deep Mind, on where AI might be taking us. 5 minutes to read.
  • Julien Laloyaux, Frank Laroi, and Marco Hirnstein debunk the myth that women are better multi-taskers than men. We all suck at it. 3 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • Kayla Matthews identifies four common problem work environments and offers ideas to optimize each of them for productivity. 4 minutes to read.
  • Guarav Kaushik shares a rant on the dubious use of “hot desks.” If you don’t know what that is, thank your deity of choice. 5 minutes to read and laugh nervously.
  • Hillary Jackson advises us on handling grief when a co-worker dies. 5 minutes to read.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the feedback!

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Thanks to everyone who took the time to take my weekly round-up satisfaction survey. Over half of you read the round-up at least 3 times a month, and most of the rest at least monthly. Most of you are either EMail subscribers or have the site in your RSS reader.

Your responses confirmed some things that I suspected and produced a couple of small surprises. For example: while everyone found the Business Acumen and Strategy and Managing Projects section to be at least somewhat valuable, over a third skip Managing Software Development altogether. I knew that I had a lot of readers who don’t manage software projects, but this was more than I thought. Perhaps the content I’m linking to isn’t valuable to you—if so, please leave a comment below and let’s get a conversation started.

About two-thirds of the readers find Applied Leadership and Working and the Workplace very valuable and nearly everyone finds Research and Insights at least somewhat valuable. If someone wants to see more (or less) of a particular area of interest within those sections, please leave a comment.

As expected, the vast majority find the “minutes to read’ estimate useful. For those who don’t, consider adjusting my estimate to match your reading speed. It’s probably not going to be as precise as Celsius to Fahrenheit, but at least you won’t start reading a long article when you only have a couple of minutes to spare.

About 82% of you watch at least some of the videos I link to. Many of you like the diverse mix although about a quarter think I should stick to project management topics. Going forward, I think I’ll link to the business stuff a little more often than the goofy stuff like Independence Day videos with guys blowing up anvils and performances by obscure bands. But not entirely.

And for those of you who don’t get the visual pun in that photo on the right, click here.