Tag Archives: Project Test Plans

New PM Articles for the Week of April 11 – 17

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of April 11 – 17. And this week’s video: Crazy Russian Hacker explains that we’ve been splitting firewood wrong all these years. “Safety is number one priority.” Spasibo, moy drug …

Must read!

  • Donald Charles Wynes suggests an interesting way to identify risks: pretend the project is over, and you’re trying to analyze why it failed.
  • Mike Clayton recommends eight techniques for identifying risks. I especially like Brainwriting and Pre-Mortem.
  • Andy Jordan points out another source of risk: a change in leadership.

Established Methods

  • Harry Hall shares a checklist that should help you understand your project, which is the first step in managing it.
  • Glen Alleman presents the Project Breathalyzer: should your project even be on the road?
  • Women Testers has released the April edition of their quarterly online magazine.
  • John Goodpasture contemplates managing schedule slack, based on a TED talk by Tim Urban on procrastination. Just 14 minutes, safe for work.
  • Elizabeth Harrin reviews Simon Moore’s book, “Strategic Portfolio Management.”
  • Elise Stevens interviews Emma Arnaz-Pemberton on how PMO’s can become trusted partners to the business. Just 16 minutes, safe for work.

Agile Methods

  • Alistair Cockburn gives an excellent talk, “The Heart of Agile.” Just 50 minutes, safe for work.
  • Joshua Taylor makes a good point: designers shouldn’t focus on code – they should focus on the business.
  • Henny Portman returns from class with a nice summary of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 4.0.
  • Emanuele Passera begins a series on Kanban, with a brief introduction to the terminology.
  • Angela Wick explains the difference between use cases and user stories, and why you should use one or the other but not both.
  • Sandeep Paudel posts a brief user story FAQ. Part one of two.

Applied Leadership

  • Cameron Conaway gets a few ideas about vision from Patti Sanchez, Chief Strategy Officer at Duarte, Inc, a “visual storytelling company” in Silicon Valley.
  • Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady, explains why hiring is so much more difficult than you might expect.
  • Liane Davey tells us how to deal with chronic complainers.
  • Art Petty explains how to succeed in high-pressure conversations.
  • Allen Ruddock contemplates the nature of motivation.

Pot Pouri

  • Bruce Harpham gives us a comprehensive approach to winning that next promotion.
  • Project Journal has rounded up 30 of the best interview questions to ask of applicants for a project management position.
  • Derek Huether explains how to triage meeting requests.
  • Thomas Carney summarizes six highly regarded productivity systems, and identifies roles that they might work best for (and not).
  • Seth Godin makes the (quality) case for not using free software.

Enjoy!

New PM Articles for the Week of November 30 – December 6

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Balloon SunriseNew project management articles published on the web during the week of November 30 – December 6. We give you a high-level view so you can read what interests you. Recommended:

Must read!

  • Patti Gilchrist recommends reducing the cost of poor quality with a risk-based testing strategy. And like most good project strategies, it starts at the beginning.
  • Art Petty encourages us to become more discriminating consumers of leadership content – getting away from the “happy talk” and digging into the dirty details.
  • Susanne Madsen details an approach for “up-skilling” an organization’s project managers.

Established Methods

  • Jeff Collins lists his top ten project management thought leaders to follow in 2016.
  • Justin Stoltzfus identifies trends in business intelligence and data analysis for 2016.
  • Todd Williams builds on an earlier post, on avoiding litigation when managing a project on behalf of a customer.
  • Nick Pisano continues his series on a general theory of project management, based on research into complex adaptive systems.
  • Elizabeth Harrin details “most effective practices” in business requirements management.
  • Harry Hall checklists the questions new team members need to have answered.
  • Gina Abudi identifies three challenges uncovered in a survey of managers who lead virtual teams, and strategies to handle them.
  • Martin Coomber demonstrates a few Visio process modeling productivity hacks.

Agile Methods

  • Glen Alleman notes that Agile at scale, in software-intensive systems-of-systems, is a very different Agile from five to eight developers in a room together.
  • Madhavi Ledalla expounds on release planning and release management – two critical techniques for delivering working software in iterations.
  • Esther Derby suggests that the team needs to understand what the product does, from the user’s point of view.
  • Mike Cohn provides an example of how to use a zero-point estimate on a user story.
  • Johanna Rothman starts a series on applying Agile methods to hardware development projects.
  • Reuben Salisbury gives us five reasons why a physical Scrum board beats the one you can access from anywhere, on a variety of devices.

Applied Leadership

  • Eric Johnson provides an executive-level bit of advice: be quick to listen and slow to react.
  • Bruce Harpham summarizes key lessons from “The Truth About Employee Engagement,” by Patrick Lencioni.
  • Colin Ellis identifies five “types” of project managers, based on their observable behaviors.
  • Bertrand Duperrin says that humans must learn to work with robots – not because humans will be replaced, but because collaboration has more potential.
  • Seth Godin notes that it isn’t economically viable (or even possible) to please some percentage of your customers.

Podcasts and Videos

  • Cornelius Fichtner interviews Richard Larson on his PMI Global Congress presentation, “Entrepreneurial Business Analysis Practitioner.” Just 17 minutes, safe for work.
  • Jesse Fewell shares a rant: why would you even want to go Agile? It shouldn’t just be “fear of missing out;” you should be seeking transformation. Just five minutes, safe for work.
  • Elise Stevens interviews Marie Longworth on managing remote vendors. Just 18 minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!

New PM Articles for the Week of November 23 – 29

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Yellow BalloonNew project management articles published on the web during the week of November 23 – 29. We give you a high-level view so you can read what interests you. Recommended:

Must read!

  • Tom McFarlin recalls Dwight D. Eisenhower’s clarification on the difference between important and urgent. Knowing the difference will help you prioritize your tasks.
  • Bertrand Duperrin points out an interesting development reflected in Jane McConnell’s annual study: your intranet and your organization are the two sides of a single reality.
  • Dick Weisinger reports on a Gartner Group estimate that 2018, half of all ethics violations will arise from improper use of Big Data.

Established Methods

  • Nick Pisano begins a series describing a general theory of projects as complex adaptive systems, based on systems theory.
  • Henny Portman reviews the second edition of “Project Sponsorship,” by Randall Englund and Alfonso Bucero, from PMI.
  • Mike Clayton explains how to lead your project sponsor. Yes, you have to lead up, or you’ll let them down.
  • Todd Williams provides a top-level look at organization change models, noting that they don’t all address the same things.
  • Thomas Carney describes the trade-offs of push processes versus pull process in issue management.
  • Harry Hall explains how to improve the quality of your risk statements.
  • Matthew Squair identifies a problem with the way that the Federal Aviation Administration defines risk severity classifications.
  • Sarah Hood tells how to include risk management into communications planning.
  • Kevin Coleman notes that everything from social media to business participation in development has raised the stakes for proper testing.
  • John Goodpasture points out an inescapable fact: most projects run on “little data,” which is mostly tracked in Excel.
  • Glen Alleman differentiates between a system and the products that comprise or deploy the system. Important distinctions for estimating cost and schedule!

Agile Methods

  • Mike Griffiths looks at managing program benefits from an Agile perspective.
  • Derek Huether uses the experience of renewing his driver’s license to illustrate two important Lean metrics: Lead Time and Cycle Time.
  • Dele Oluwole suggests pairings of Scrum, XP, DSDM, and Lean. Sort of an Agile sommelier…

Applied Leadership

  • Elizabeth Harrin expounds on that most practical skill: leadership.
  • Bruce Harpham reflects on his positive experience as an active member of Toastmasters.
  • Art Petty describes the behavior of a negative manager type he calls the “hyper-rooster.” And the cure involves more than just switching to decaf.
  • Liane Davey concludes her analysis of what’s missing from executive teams, and how to bridge the gap.
  • Ravindra Wankar offers some advice for Millenial project managers.

Podcasts and Videos

  • Cornelius Fichtner interviews Frank Saladis on his 2015 PMI Global Congress presentation, ”The Indispensable Project Manager.” Just 21 minutes, safe for work.
  • Allen Ruddock illustrates how to analyze a business problem to ensure you are doing the right project. Just ten minutes, safe for work.
  • Margaret Meloni explains how to diffuse anger. Just two minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!