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!