Tag Archives: Project Test Plans

New PM Articles for the Week of November 19 – 25

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of November 19 – 25. And this week’s video: Apple CEO Time Cook explains where his ethical compass comes from and what it means to be an ethical leader. 3 minutes, safe for work.

This week only! The Kindle version of my book, The Data Conversion Cycle: A guide to migrating transactions and other records, for system implementation teams, will be discounted to a mere $1.99 starting at 08:00 PST on Monday, November 26. It will return to the regular price at 17:00 PST on November 30. For those who prefer Dead Tree books, the paperback version is available for $6.99. Help the business SME’s on your team get ready for the New Year!

Business Acumen and Strategy

  • Joshua Brustein reports that growth at the big tech companies is slowing, stock prices are down, and some think regulation is coming. Call it “Peak Tech.” 5 minutes to read.
  • Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, argues that it’s time to start taking anti-trust actions against Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. 4 minutes to read.
  • Greg Satell notes that automation doesn’t replace jobs; it changes how tasks are performed. A sustainable competitive edge still requires people. 5 minutes to read.

Managing Projects

  • Harry Hall shares twelve tips to improve your delivery when speaking to a group. 3 minutes to read.
  • Andy Makar points out five things you can do to thank your team, even on a tiny budget. 5 minutes to read.
  • Tzvi Zucker argues that scheduling should be driven by people who will perform the work, not the tasks to be assigned. 8 minutes to read.
  • Glen Alleman describes the relationship between cost management and value management. 3 minutes to read.
  • Mike Clayton presents his updated list of the 52 best project management blogs. 15 minutes to read.
  • Dharam Singh reports that Dr. Ginger Levin, author, trainer, and long-time thought leader in the project management community, has passed away. 2 minutes to read.

Managing Software Development

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from “agile trust” to healthy product debates to continuous alignment of product management. 7 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Kiron Bondale addresses a question from a learner: “Won’t the ideas from a retrospective use up some of the team’s capacity in the next sprint?” 2 minutes to read.
  • Cassandra Leung had to develop a test strategy from scratch, in a hurry. Here are the seven steps she followed. 4 minutes to read.
  • Kristin Jackvony shares her thoughts on how to prioritize what to test when there’s not enough time to test everything thoroughly. 6 minutes to read.
  • Pawel Brodzinski notes that self-organizing must be implemented throughout the hierarchy, not just at the lowest (team) level. 5 minutes to read.
  • Edwin Dando points out the need for increased accountability when increasing autonomy. 4 minutes to read.
  • Amir Ghahrai lists his choices for the top ten open source performance testing tools, with links. 2 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Alexander Maasik curates his weekly list of leadership articles, from leading an inexperienced team of junior developers to why analog still matters to finding strength in ambiguity. 5 outbound links, 3 minutes to read.
  • Rich Mironov provides a list of thoughtful responses to the ultimatum, “I’ll quit unless …” 7 minutes to read.
  • Lila MacLellan notes that we can have more of an impact in asking than we can in telling. 4 minutes to read.

Research and Insights

  • Aisha Hassan summarizes key points from the World Talent Ranking 2018 report. The US and UK trail western Europe in attracting, developing, and retaining talent. 2 minutes to read.
  • Mark McGranaghan presents findings from the Ink & Switch research lab’s study of the sources of slow software response (which isn’t always about the software). 15 minutes to read.
  • Keith Foote identifies trends for Big Data in 2019. 6 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • Elise Stevens interviews Paul Pelletier on disrespect in the workplace, from gossip to bullying and harassment. Podcast, 39 minutes, safe for work.
  • Ananya Bhattacharya reports that tightening restrictions on H-1B visas are leading Indian IT firms with a presence in Canada and Mexico to bring in workers from those countries on TN visas. 2 minutes to read.
  • Adriana Girdler tells us how to be confident at work. Video, 5 minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!

New PM Articles for the Week of April 2 – 8

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of April 2 – 8. And this week’s video: Bones and a full reconstruction of the largest pterosaur (flying dinosaur) ever found are now on display at the Altmuehltal Dinosaur Museum, in a suburb of Stuttgart, Germany. Hey, even if you are tired of Jurassic Park sequels, this is cool!

Must read!

  • Greg Satell explains how General Electric got disrupted—by getting better and better at delivering things their customers needed less and less. 5 minutes to read.
  • Tim Fernholz notes the huge difference between getting good at mass production (Tesla) and getting reliable at reusability (SpaceX). Transitioning to production can be the biggest business risk of all. 5 minutes to read.
  • Graham Kenny clarifies the relationships between objectives, strategies, and actions. 4 minutes to read.

Established Methods

  • Elizabeth Harrin provides the questions you need to ask about GDPR implications before starting a new project. 8 minutes to read.
  • Dmitriy Nizhebetskiy points out the ways in which software development projects are managed differently from other types of projects. 4 minutes to read.
  • Karin Hurt shares the INSPIRE model for project management accountability conversations. 4 minutes to read.
  • Mike Clayton tutors us on project procurement management, as described in the PMBOK and practiced in the public and private sector. 10 minutes to read.
  • Jigs Gaton begins a series on creating custom reports in Microsoft Project, beginning with changes to a delivered report. 7 minutes to read.
  • The folks at Redbooth explain how to conduct a project pre-mortem and post-mortem. And your project doesn’t even have to be dead! 6 minutes to read.

Agile Methods

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from the Scrum master end game to the way Scrum and DevOps fit together to the cost of decision making. 2 minutes to read, 5 outbound links.
  • Johanna Rothman makes a distinction between being data-driven and data-informed. Good decision makers should note the difference. 2 minutes to read.
  • Cassandra Leung points out the problems with limiting work in progress (WIP) with creative work—in her example, writing. But it has other applications. 6 minutes to read.
  • Renee Troughton provides a decision tree on when to move to a different format for retrospectives. 2 minutes to read.
  • Luis Goncalves makes his recommendation for an Agile retrospective format, based on Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s book on the subject. 7 minutes to read.
  • Kent McDonald posts an overview of Liftoff: Start and sustain successful agile teams, by Ainsley Nies and Diana Larsen. Just over a minute to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Alexander Maasik curates his weekly list of project leadership articles, from statistics to servant leadership to expressing your team’s feelings. 3 minutes to read, 5 outbound links.
  • Adam Grant interviews Daniel Coyle, author of The Culture Code: The secrets of highly successful groups. He says that trust is built in a way you wouldn’t expect. 4 minutes to read.
  • Sam begins a series on the way we define “purpose” to achieve alignment within the organization. Part 2 expands that to the customer. Each around 2 minutes.

Technology, Techniques, and Human Behavior

  • Rich Rogers explores two testing cultures: testing as an adaptive investigation and testing as a factory process, or confirmation culture. 6 minutes to read.
  • Simon Schrijver does a deep dive into the details of pair testing. 7 minutes to read.
  • Paul Seaman talks about alternatives to the “given, when, then” acceptance criteria format, specifically conditions of satisfaction. 4 minutes to read.
  • Thomas Redman notes that machine learning tools are only as valuable as the quality of your data. Garbage in, algorithmic garbage out. 5 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • Eric Torrence examines the ways that Detail-oriented People and Big-picture People need to communicate with each other. 4 minutes to read.
  • Farah Mohammed tries to answer the rhetorical question: What makes a company worth working for? 3 minutes to read.
  • Karen Bridges reviews research linking sleep deprivation to reduced productivity and health problems and then suggests some positive sleep habits. 5 minutes to read.

Enjoy!

New PM Articles for the Week of March 26 – April 1

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New project management articles published on the web during the week of March 26 – April 1. And this week’s video: Seth Godin suggests that we can benefit from thinking backwards—flipping the point of view on which our assumptions are based. 19 minutes, safe for work.

Must read!

  • Christian Stewart notes some significant data privacy concerns for this of us who use Google’s services and products. 5 minutes to read. Nervous yet?
  • Todd Haselton tells how to download a copy of everything Google knows about you. 3 minutes to read, much longer to download. And if this doesn’t creep you out:
  • A 2016 memo by Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth acknowledges that the company’s relentless pursuit of growth via data collection could get people killed. Ethics matter, even when you’re popular. 8 minutes to read.

Established Methods

  • Kailash Awati provides a very detailed tutorial on using a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate a distribution of probable completion times, using a simple project with four tasks and three-point estimates. 20 minutes to read, but well worth it.
  • John Goodpasture extracts some key principles from Nate Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise: why so many predictions fail – and some don’t. 2 minutes to read.
  • Elizabeth Harrin reviews SaaS project resource management TeamDeck. 5 minutes to read.
  • Katrine Kavli gives us a crib sheet on test plans, useful for everyone from project managers to end users recruited for UAT. With templates! 2 minutes to read.
  • Dmitriy Nizhebetskiy explains how (and why) to create your own project management templates, rather than download one from some PM site. 4 minutes to read.
  • Brian Anthony O’Malley recommends a few ways to make your status reports more effective in a way that promotes your personal brand. 5 minutes to read.

Agile Methods

  • Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of Agile content, from agile ecology to scaling with Lean and DevOps to problematic management principles. 3 minutes to read, 7 outbound links.
  • Brendan Connolly expands on Test Driven Development to provide an entry point for testers to perform their QA—start with objectives. 4 minutes to read.
  • Joe Colantonio interviews Michael Bolton on rapid software testing. Podcast, 38 minutes, safe for work.
  • Gojko Adzic notes that as more SaaS applications run in complex combinations, we will need to do more testing in the production environment. 7 minutes to read.
  • Pete Houghton explains how he found a bug—not by testing conformance to specifications, but by testing conformance to expectations. 2 minutes to read.
  • Martin Fowler announces the second edition of “Refactoring.” 7 minutes to read.

Applied Leadership

  • Alexander Maasik curates his weekly list of leadership articles, from the importance of self-improvement to improving your KPI’s to the difference between marketing, advertising, and branding. 3 minutes to read.
  • Mike Clayton points out the top priorities for project leaders, using the acronym LEAD. 10 minutes to read.
  • Marcia Reynolds explains the difference between convincing and influencing. 4 minutes to read.
  • Kiron Bondale notes that psychological safety must be cultivated one person at a time.

Technology, Techniques, and Human Behavior

  • Daniel Bourke notes that we may have already invented artificial general intelligence. Maybe we just haven’t noticed. 5 minutes to read.
  • David Nield shares eleven tell-tale signs your accounts and devices have been hacked. 8 minutes to read.
  • Dan Kopf charts the history of the scatter plot (OK, that was nerd humor—so sue me). 3 minutes to read.

Working and the Workplace

  • John Yorke philosophizes on feedback—one can be the beneficiary of feedback or the victim. 5 minutes to read.
  • Francisco Saez explains why you need a daily action plan to let you focus on what’s important. 3 minutes to read.
  • Laura Guillen reports on recent research that casts serious doubt on the existence of a “confidence gap” between men and women. 5 minutes to read.

Enjoy!