New project management articles published on the web during the week of October 14 – 20. And this week’s video: Harry Hall explains all the ways that the project charter provides value. 7 minutes, safe for work.

Business Acumen and Strategy

• Victor DeMarines looks at the need to balance privacy and data protection constraints with legitimate business goals. 4 minutes to read.
• Graham Kenny suggests five keys for defining strategy in a way that makes it executable. 5 minutes to read.
• Simon Evans reports that in 3Q2019, renewable energy sources generated more electricity than fossil fuels in the UK. One of the largest industries in the world is being disrupted! 8 minutes to read.

Managing Projects

• Elizabeth Harrin presents a seven-point plan for helping your project team to manage project risk. 7 minutes to read.
• John Goodpasture shares a slide deck on Monte Carlo simulations and answers a few questions that are bound to come up. 6 minutes to read.
• Leigh Espy posts her notes from a long airplane conversation with Olu Jinadu, Director of Quality at ThyssenKrupp on what is critical to success when managing quality projects. 8 minutes to read.
• Tim Liu expounds on five common reasons that data integration projects fail. 7 minutes to read.
• Kiron Bondale finds a few project issue management lessons in classic horror films. 2 minutes to read.
• Johanna Rothman notes that some project constraints are impossible to meet—fixed cost, scope, and date—even using agile methods. 3 minutes to read.

Managing Software Development

• Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from time-based estimates to useless standups to Output vs. Outcome vs. Impact. 7 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
• Mike Cohn explains what software developers want from their product owner. 4 minutes to read.
• Kristin Jackvony shares an anecdote that illustrates why we should test in the Production environment immediately after deployment. 2 minutes to read.
• Angie Jones posts her ten commandments of navigating code reviews; stone tablets not required. 8 minutes to read.
• Gojko Adzic has released a free card deck as a printable PDF containing 50 ideas to improve user stories. Based on the book he wrote with David Evans.
• Peter Rombouts briefly examines software maintainability in low-code, cloud-based environments. 3 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

• Jory MacKay coaches us on overcoming indecision and helping your team improve the quality of their decisions. 12 minutes to read.
• Sarah M. Hoban tells us how to deal with a difficult project sponsor. 3 minutes to read, or 5 minutes to listen to the podcast; safe for work.
• Alister Scott suggests an alternative to the MoSCoW model for prioritizing requirements. Just over a minute to read.

Cybersecurity and Data Protection

• Adam Shostack curated a list of content on risk management and governance, threat modeling, and security design flaw detection. 5 outbound links, one minute to read.
• Alyza Sebenius reports on the creation of the new Cyber Directorate at the National Security Agency. 4 minutes to read.
• Akash Deep tutors us on proxy servers—what they are, how they are used, and the business benefits that they provide. 3 minutes to read.
• Curtis Franklin alerts us to “glitching”—hardware-fault injection attacks. Still rare in the wild, hardware security, including physical security, needs to be part of the plan. 4 minutes to read.

Pot Pourri

• Nir Eyal argues that the most important skill we can develop is the ability to be indistractable—to selectively control what gets our attention. 10 minutes to read.
• Lindsay Curtis tells us how to succeed as project management professionals in the gig economy. 5 minutes to read.
• Sharlyn Lauby interviews labor attorney Alex Dunn on the changes coming to the Fair Labor Standards Act beginning in January 2020 that define who is eligible for overtime. 7 minutes to read.

Enjoy!