New project management articles published on the web during the week of March 21 – 27. And this week’s video: making an axe from rocks and sticks. As recently as 4,000 years ago, this was a common work activity in most human societies. Still think your software tools suck?

Must read!

Cameron Conaway examines the New Discrimination: cultural fit, and notes that a better case can be made for cultural contribution in hiring decisions.

Hope Reese reports on the rapidly expanding trend for companies to contract with knowledge workers in remote locations.

Stuart Easton notes that collaboration has a potentially powerful down side: it can actually slow down decision making.

Established Methods

Elizabeth Harrin goes beyond the stakeholder power-and-impact grid to explore real engagement, based on communication and collaboration.

Ginger Levin interviews PMI Fellow Russ Archibald, who managed his first project 67 years ago and released a new book just last year.

John Goodpasture reflects on an old blog article at Random Rule of Thumb, adapting the Five Stages of Grief to a model for accepting change.

Paul Ritchie considers the dancing-angels question: how many simultaneous projects can one project manager handle?

Glen Alleman explores the Venn Diagram of forecasting and estimating.

Moira Alexander captures twelve questions you should prepare for, prior to your next project management interview.

Deb Schaffer focuses on the problem set commonly encountered by the project manager in a small company.

Ryan Ogilvie says that the key to a successful post-mortem is fearlessness. The worst has already happened …

Agile Methods

Mike Griffiths expresses his reservations about Bi-Modal IT, as championed by the Gartner Group and others. It’s a continuum, not a choice of mutually exclusive extremes.

Mike Cohn explains why Sprint planning doesn’t require all that much detail. Identify the big things and leave enough time to handle the little things.

Rumesh Wijetunge shares some of the lessons his organization learned in their efforts to scale Agile.

Patrick Sinke explains the benefits of microservices – strong decoupling in an SOA.

Applied Leadership

Mike Sisco identifies three main culprits for IT failure: a disconnect with the business, poor communication, and project failures.

Art Petty notes that leadership begins with personal development. “Self-confidence, self-esteem and clarity of purpose are fundamental to succeeding at leading.”

Seth Godin: “In any competitive market, be prepared to invest your heart and soul and focus on the [attribute] you compete on. Might as well choose something you can live with.”

Aaron Smith encapsulates a few insights from Patrick Stroh, author of “Advancing Innovation.”

Norah Martin invokes some famous success stories to illustrate the idea that business growth and personal growth are closely intertwined.

Elise Stevens interviews Heath Suddleson on finding a mentor and making the relationship work for both of you. Just 23 minutes, safe for work.

Pot Pouri

Tiago Forte argues that, as we learn more about behavior change, we are realizing that there’s more to it than simply deciding to change our behavior.

Coert Visser cites two recent studies of self-concordant (self-selected) goals, exploring the relationship between goal motivation and goal progress.

Bertrand Duperrin makes the case for the intranet as a digital workplace for all employees – not just white collar workers.

Peter Thornycroft points out the administrative challenge of providing secure, reliable wireless connectivity to devices that need to exchange data with the Cloud – the Internet of Things.

Enjoy!

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