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!