New project management articles published on the web during the week of January 7 – 13. And this week’s video: Microsoft program manager Verlebie Chan talks about overcoming bias, expectations, and self-doubt and taking risks on her way to establishing her career as a software developer. 13 minutes to watch.
Business Acumen and Strategy
- Mike Murphy reports from the Consumer Electronics Show 2019. “We’ve entered the post-smartphone era.” 8 minutes to read.
- The folks at ELIX list the core business values of Amazon, as articulated and evolved by Jeff Bezos. 8 minutes to read.
- Paul Rawlinson makes an elegant case for regulation as necessary to keep global trade from becoming a zero-sum game. 3 minutes to read.
Managing Projects
Mike Clayton recaps ten lessons he’s learned about project management over the years. Best line: “Stakeholder Engagement is Project Management for Sophisticated Adults.”8 minutes to read.
- The folks at PM Times join forces to point out trends in project management, business analysis, and agile methods during 2019. 6 minutes to read.
- Carolyn Smith shares lessons learned from two decades managing IT PMO organizations. 14 minutes to read but well worth it.
- Leigh Espy tutors us on affinity diagrams—what they are and how to use them. 6 minutes to read.
- Sandhya Gupta shares her checklist for sunsetting software products, from the vendor’s point of view. 7 minutes to read.
- Elise Stevens interviews Susanne Madsen on managing stress while managing projects. Podcast, 34 minutes, safe for work.
Managing Software Development
- Stefan Wolpers curates his list of Agile content, from the EPIQ model to product design principles to the Prime Directive. 7 outbound links, three minutes to read.
- John Demian gets deep into the economics of a serverless (in this case AWS Lambda) framework for operations. 12 minutes to read.
- Vladimir Fedak makes the argument against a switch to microservices. 4 minutes to read.
- Scott Shipp wants to put the “engineering” back in software engineering. Hear, hear! 5 minutes to read.
- Henny Portman name checks Agile frameworks, from well-known to obscure and a couple that I don’t think count as Agile frameworks. 12 minutes to read.
- Kristin Jackvony explains how the Automation Test Wheel, an alternative concept to the testing pyramid that she described here, works in practice. 5 minutes to read.
Applied Leadership
- Randy Conley gets a few leadership lessons from observing nature in action: one hawk and three crows. 5 minutes to read.
- Mary Jo Asmus helps reflexive problem-solvers keep the problems with their owners with one simple question. 2 minutes to read.
- Steve Keating explains the difference between a talker and a communicator. I’ll let you describe the transmitter. Here’s part 2. Each about 3 minutes to read.
Research and Insights
Marc Prosser asks whether facial recognition technology is still viable, now that 3D printed busts of people’s heads have been used to unlock 4 of 5 smartphones. 4 minutes to read.
- Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest man, reports from a Harvard University lab on new robots shaped like nothing Isaac Asimov ever imagined. 4 minutes to read.
- David Stringer and Kevin Buckland report on progress in getting to commercially viable solid-state battery technology, the key to faster charging. 6 minutes to read.
- Paramita Ghosh explains the decentralized data storage approach commonly known as blockchain and points out a few good use cases. 5 minutes to read.
Working and the Workplace.
- Steph Smith curated a list of ten 2019 conferences for women in technology and on the way identified a couple of diversity scholarships. 6 minutes to read.
- Alessandro Lulian makes the business case for hiring Millennials. For one thing, they outnumber us Boomers in the workforce. 4 minutes to read.
- Brian Wallace shares an infographic explaining how to robot-proof your career, in case you’re asking for a friend. 3 minutes or so to read.
Enjoy!