New PM Articles for the Week of November 18 – 24

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Dave Gordon

New project management articles published on the web during the week of November 18 – 24. We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to! Recommended:

Must read

Scott Berkun shares the notes from his data analysis presentation at the Warm Gun 2013 conference on measurable design. The model matters more than the data!
Michael Greer tells a story, illustrating how simply requesting sign-off in order to proceed can be a powerful tool for getting decisions finalized.

Leadership

Terry Bunio lists four critical qualities for a good manager.
Michael Lopp catalogs three basic roles for leaders. “In order to build epic shit at scale, a colorful tapestry of talent and degrees of experience is essential.”
Martin Webster asks if your leadership is actually slowing progress.
Peter de Jager shares his thoughts on helping a team form by creating opportunities for them to collaborate.
Cheri Baker recaps a few good communications habits that can make our colleagues feel more at ease.
Kenneth Darter takes a moment to help us develop our face-to-face social skills.
Cyndee Miller offers one final observation from PMO Symposium 2013: PMO Directors need to think like executives.

PM Best Practices

Elizabeth Harrin interviews Angel Berniz, who explains how the new project management standard, ISO 21500, will impact us.
Vincent McGevna defends the application of processes to the execution of projects.
Todd Williams breaks down the roles and responsibilities of the folks charged with rescuing a failed project.
David Hillson suggests a framework for identifying project risks, based on Edward de Bono’s Six Value Medals. You might remember de Bono for the Six Thinking Hats.
Luis Seabra Coelho examines the cognitive bias known as functional fixedness, and how it might apply to motivation.
Anya Faingersh recounts an old story that illustrates why an expensive solution delivered now beats a cost-effective solution, delivered too late.

Podcasts and Videos

Samad Aidane interviews Naomi Caietti, who explains how women in project management roles can achieve the right degree of assertiveness. Just 44 minutes, safe for work.
Cornelius Fichtner interviews Ricardo Vargas, who explains his approach to quantifying a qualitative risk analysis. Nerdy, but interesting ; 23 minutes, safe for work.
Cesar Abeid interviews Francis Wade on his consulting practice and book on time management. Just 48 minutes, safe for work.

Agile Methods

Glen Alleman critiques NPR journalista Elise Hu’s article on why Heatlthcare.gov was doomed from the start.
Jesse Fewell came from the Washington, D.C. Scrum User’s Groups with new insights into why the roll-out of Healthcare.gov failed so badly.
Shim Marom articulates the difference between doing Agile and being Agile.
Derek Huether covers the key barriers to Agile adoption, as found by VersionOne in their annual survey.

Pot Pouri

Harold Kerzner describes a family Thanksgiving, from a project manager’s point of view. But the PM is not the person actually in charge …
Karina Keith rounds up three blog articles on how to maintain your productivity over the holidays. Makes me wonder if someone is missing the point.
Belle Beth Cooper has collected ten statistics on social media that should inform your company’s strategy for marketing and communication.

Enjoy!

Selecting Means of Communication

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Dave Gordon

“Avoid, rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill. For all life is precious, nor can any be replaced.” — Master Kan (Philip Ahn), “Kung Fu”

I’ve seen a lot of different estimates of the amount of time a project manager spends on communication, but I’ve never seen an estimate below 70%. So if we’re going to be interacting with others for most of our working day, we might benefit from a rubric for selecting our means of communication for maximum efficiency.

A rubric is used to assess a performance task, but it can also be used to determine the best approach for performing the task. The table below describes a rubric for assessing planned communications. Each element is associated with criteria, which correspond to numeric values. Communication tasks with lower totals benefits from use of one-to-one communications, whereas somewhat higher totals benefit from one-to-many communications, such as Tweets or Email. The highest totals benefit from many-to-many interactions, such as conference calls or in-person meetings.

	3	2	1
Number in the Audience	Many	A few	One
Proximity of the audience	Distant	In between	Close
Physical distribution	Widely distributed	In between	Co-located
Need for audience interaction	High	Moderate	Low
Familiar with subject matter	Yes	Somewhat	No
Potential for emotional reaction	Low	Moderate	High
Complexity of subject matter	High	Moderate	Low
Need for immediate response	Low	Moderate	High

The goal of communication planning should be not to reduce the amount of time spent communicating, but to making planned communications as efficient as possible. Analysis by rubric can be very useful in preparing our project communication plans. To paraphrase Master Kan: Speak face to face, rather than by telephone. Telephone, rather than Instant Message. IM, rather than Tweet. Tweet, rather than Email. Email, rather than schedule a conference call. Conference, rather than schedule a meeting. For everyone’s time is precious, and their attention and participation should not be wasted.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on the rubric elements and criteria – I’m pretty sure my first pass can be improved. Leave a comment below and let’s collaborate on it!

New PM Articles for the Week of September 30 – October 6

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Dave Gordon

New project management articles published on the web during the week of September 30 – October 6. We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to! Recommended:

Didn’t get a chance to read all of the PM FlashBlog articles? No matter – Shim Marom has compiled the “best of!”
Peter Saddington gets input from practitioners Don Gray, Derek Huether, Chris Goldsbury, and Mike Cottmeyer on making Agile work.
Elizabeth Harrin reviews “Business Analysis and Leadership,” edited by Penny Pullan and James Archer.
David Hilson explains the difference between explicit and implicit risk.
John Goodpasture notes that few risks are surprises. The hard part is actually hearing the warnings.
Martin Webster: “Innovation is not thinking different. It is doing something different.”
Donna Reed shares her thoughts on keeping the project team engaged.
Dave Prior interviews Scrum coach, trainer, chicken-and-pig cartoonist, and author Mike Vizdos. Just 27 minutes, safe for work.
Cesar Abeid interviews fellow project management blogger Elizabeth Harrin. Almost an hour and safe for work – what else would you expect?
Jennifer Witt shows how to capture lessons learned at the end of a project. Or, in the middle. Just six minutes, safe for work.
Patrick Weaver explains the difference between complexity and ambiguity. No excuses!
Glen Alleman explores some key estimating takeaways from “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering,” by Robert Glass.
Patrick Gray makes the case for collecting use cases, as opposed to identifying requested features.
Andy Jordan looks back fondly on a horrible project. Well, that’s the sort you learn the most from.
Luis Seabra Coelho shows how loss aversion makes us disregard the sunken nature of our sunk costs.
Chuck Morton starts a new series on governance maturity, at level 1.
Neil Pragnell and his boss have a difference of opinion on whether to explicitly list what is “out of scope.”
Daniel Hemhauser shares some advice on how to spend the last few minutes before stating the PMP exam.
Scott Berkun has made a list of his favorite books about making software.
Kailash Awati considers software-as-a-service offerings from the perspective of transactions costs.