New project management articles published on the web during the week of January 14 – 20. And this week’s video: Mark Galley demonstrates a 5-why analysis, using the Titanic as an example. He moves from a simple 1-why, progressing to a 3-why, then a 5-why, then several valid 5-whys representing different points of view, and finally shows a poster with 125 whys. 5 minutes to watch—try not to drown!
Business Acumen and Strategy
- Paul Maidment reports on the fear, uncertainty, and doubt following Parliament’s rejection of the Brexit deal, and what businesses are doing to prepare for a hard Brexit. 6 minutes to read.
- Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, offers his executive’s-eye view of the top ten tech issues, each with public policy implications, for 2019. 11 minutes to read.
- Sharlyn Lauby offers some specific recommendations for improving your business acumen. Note that SHRM and PMI have similar notions of what that phrase means. 3 minutes to read.
Managing Projects
Kiron Bondale notes that PMI just released their Benefits Realization Management Practice Guide this month and suggests several curable causes for poor practice. 2 minutes to read.- The nice folks at Clarizen suggest six complementary strategies for dealing with difficult vendors. 3 minutes to read.
- Elise Stevens interviews Emily Luijbregts on diversity in project management. Aside: we men need to do a better job of recognizing when things aren’t right. Podcast, 27 minutes.
- John Goodpasture reviews three quantitative concepts that we need to understand when discussing probability and statistical assessments. 2 minutes to read.
- Henny Portman provides a quick overview of The Evidence-Based Management Guide, developed by Scrum.org. Lots of good content in only 11 pages—highly recommended. 2 minutes to read.
- Mike Clayton condenses the team stress detection and management techniques from his book, Brilliant Stress Management. 10 minutes to read.
Managing Software Development
- Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from product management problem areas to handling unplanned work in Scrum to Feather’s law of conservation of complexity. 7 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
- Nishi Grover Garg introduces us to usability testing, from why to how. 4 minutes to read.
- John Cutler describes his conversation with the CEO of a medium-sized company that had “gone Agile.” Just not far enough to get the results they were looking for. 3 minutes to read.
- Andy Hunt describes the four essential parts of a modern software development strategy. 6 minutes to read.
- Chris Matts translates the SAFe definition of an Epic to something meaningful to actual practitioners in an enterprise environment. 5 minutes to read.
- Charity Majors notes that in the modern era of distributed systems, the final round of testing happens in production. 4 minutes to read.
Applied Leadership
Lisa Lai coaches us on preparing to manage in times of increasing strategic ambiguity. Disruption happens—see the first two links under Business Acumen and Strategy! 6 minutes to read.- Greg Satell debunks the four most common myths peddled by business pundits. But pundits gotta pund, I guess. 5 minutes to read.
- Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein argue that new-fangled “flat” organizations need bosses more than ever—they just need them to do different things. 13 minutes to read.
Research and Insights
- Anshu Sharma gives us the details behind a Russian intrusion into the US power grid. “[E]very [trusted] business relationship is a potential vulnerability.” 6 minutes to read.
- Thomas Brewster reports on a white-hat hack, taking control of giant construction cranes. I hate it when life imitates “Die Hard” sequels. 5 minutes to read.
- Sagar Bhatia talks through the positives and challenges we expect to see as 5G deployment begins in earnest. 7 minutes to read.
Working and the Workplace
- Stav Ziv gives us several more sophisticated alternatives to address our cover letter, because “To whom it may concern” is so early-20th 5 minutes to read.
- Kelsey Jones coaches us on tools and techniques to be more effective at creating and responding to Email. 5 minutes to read.
- Adriana Girdler covers the basics of cell phone etiquette in the work environment. Video, 9 minutes, safe for work (naturally).
- Emma Charlton presents an analysis of the hard and soft skills most in demand, as reflected in the employment requisitions on LinkedIn. 2 minutes to read.
Enjoy!
