Every month I put together my version of the best articles on project management, leadership and team building. Check out the TOP 10 articles on project management in April 2019. This month`s digest turned out to be devoted mainly to Scrum and Agile methodologies.
Trends
Seven Priorities for Project Managers in 2019
I`m sure that all of us are trying to be the best project managers they can. But how to stay afloat in the modern world where the only 100% reliable trend is changes. This article teaches you what priorities you should ahdere to in your professional career development in 2019 [Read more…]
Best Practices
The Project Manager’s Guide To Vendor Selection
The majority of project managers sooner or later face a need of choosing a vendor for their projects. It is a great responsibility and a non-trivial task, especially when you`re doing this for the first time. Don`t know where to start? This article provides some advice on how to approach the process of choosing a vendor [Read more…]
How To Write A Smart Organizational Project Management Plan
When anyone mentiones a project management plan and PMBoK together, I imagine a pile of documents most of which are completely useless and exist only for the sake of reporting. I feel really bad when I`m thinking about how much time is wasted on writing numerous documents that are never used. Hovewer, there is another approach to project management planning, which I would call – “A project management plan in a day”. Please, check this article below for the recipe of a quick and useful project management plan [Read more…]
Team Building
5 Stages of Team Development: What You Need to Know
It is a well-known fact that great things are never done by one person, they are done by great teams. Hovewer, bringing together a group of seasoned professionals doesn`t mean that we get a great team. Any team has to go through some stages of development to become a really cohesive and good performing team. This article highlights the common stages that any team goes through and gives project managers some recommendations about what they should do in each of the stages [Read more…]
Remote Teams
Why Managing Remotely is So Tough – and Eight Ways to Make it Easier
Managing remotely has quickly become the norm in today’s work world. And yet, it’s not easy. When distance is a factor, a great manager must push even harder to build a positive culture and get the most out of their team. This article highlights 8 things the best managers do to successfully lead remote teams [Read more…]
How Do You Keep a Hybrid Team on Track?
In this article Upwork employee shares what challenges you as a manager may face when adopting a hybrid team strategy. A plenty of useful tips are given on how to integrate both freelancers and in-house employees in a one effective team, wisely leveraging pecularities of both types of workers [Read more…]
Agile & Scrum
Scrum Author Talks Removing Dev Hurdles, Old-World Thinking
This is a big interview of a famous Scrum practitioner Gunther Verheyen. He speculates on such topics as adaptability which is an essense of Scrum framework, the practical concerns of Scrum adoption and implementation, the role of Scrum Master, etc. You may find comperensive answers to common questions related to Scrum and a lot of wise thoughts here [Read more…]
Scrum Master Tips – Mind Your “Say:Do” Ratio
A lot of people who are starting their Scrum Master careers have difficulties with understanding of the responsibilities and the value of this position. The things become even more complicated when young Scrum Masters see words like “coaching”, “leading” and “facilitating” in the Scrum Guide. The author of this article explains what it means to be a Scrum Master. Also a completely wonderful KPI of Scrum Master is introduced – “Say:Do ratio” [Read more…]
When Kanban is the Better Choice
Scrum and Kanban are two most popular Agile frameworks so far. Unfortunaltely, very often people confuse these frameworks, don`t know which one to choose or even think of them as competitors. In this article Brendan Wovchko clearly explains the differences between Scrum and Kanban, also suggesting when to choose any of them [Read more…]
Your Team Won’t Think of Everything in Sprint Planning Meetings. And That’s OK
This article explains why it is harmful to push your team to do a better planning of an iteration. The main reason for not doing this is that not everything is predictable. Instead of trying to identify and estimate every task Mike Cohn suggests targeting about two-thirds of the tasks that are of great importance and should ultimately be completed during the Sprint [Read more…]