New project management articles published on the web during the week of July 14 – 20. We gather all of this stuff so you don’t have to search for it! Recommended:

PM Best Practices

• Oleksandr Drozd shares a graphic on increasingly distributed teams, and some best practices for managing geographically distributed project teams.
• Gina Abudi addresses the things we can do to facilitate decision making by members of our project team.
• Elizabeth Harrin reports from the Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit, on a case study of a rollout of Microsoft solutions presented by Gérald Morin and a panel discussion on PPM.
• Cecily Dennis and Dan Meers outline their process to develop data quality metrics, rapidly and repeatably.
• Johanna Rothman has an article published in a new, on-line quarterly called “Women Testers.” It looks like it will be an excellent resource.
• Nick Pisano gives us the benefit of his long experience with contract negotiations, in the form of critical success factors and an illustrative anecdote.
• Bassam Zarkout gives an excellent overview of the relationship between reactive e-discovery and proactive information governance.
• Calen Legaspi explores the productivity impact of accumulating technical debt.
• Andreas Eisele looks at technical debt with a project manager’s eye, and sees four viable approaches to preserving maintainability.
• John Reiling asks the rhetorical question, why is a PMO needed?

Agile Methods

• Neil Killick shares his heuristic for “slicing” work into granular chunks, to facilitate collection of empirical data to support forecasting.
• Mike Cohn suggests we simplify ordering our backlog with just two priorities: “now” and “not now.”
• Andrea Brockmeier advocates for the daily standup, from a project manager’s perspective.

The Limits of Agility

• Glen Alleman points out the problem with incremental delivery, when the customer can’t derive value from the interim releases.
• Shim Marom sees a potential down side to the embrace of late changes inherent in Agile methods.
• Tushar Patel notes that Agile development presents problems for project managers, who still have responsibilities to stakeholders outside the team.

Professional Development

• Cheri Baker proposes a structure for ethical behavior in leaders and managers.
• Mariel Norton explores the impact of body language in meetings.
• Lindsay Scott explains how “impression management” applies in job interviews. Note that interviewers are trying to manage their impression of you, too!
• Jen Skrabak sees the increasingly common chief strategy officer as a potential career opportunity for portfolio managers.

Podcasts and Videos

• Cesar Abeid interviews Liz Pearce, CEO of project management software house LiquidPlanner. Just 22 minutes, safe for work.
• Cornelius Fichtner interviews Wayne Turmel, who says we need to meet like we mean it. Just 36 minutes, safe for work.
• Rich Maltzman and Dave Shirley share a Green IT webinar. Just over an hour, safe for work.
• Dave Prior interviews Melanie Franklin on her new book, presenting an Agile framework for planning and implementing change. Just 24 minutes, safe for work.
• Margaret Meloni provides some techniques for procrastinators. If you don’t click on this link right away, I’m sure she’ll understand.

Enjoy!