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Currently Available by Scott Stribrny

I’ve had the good fortune for decades to work with project managers in companies ranging across many industries. From these experiences, the best project managers I’ve worked with seem to have the following traits.

Virtual communication is similar to face-to-face communication, with the obvious difference that participants are not in the same room at the same time. For virtual communication to be successful, the principles of effective interpersonal communication must be carefully honed.

From our work advising and studying client companies, we have discerned many blunders that leaders should avoid if they want to fully capitalize on agile’s potential. Here are key indicators that warn you when you are about to make a requirements blunder.

Complex engineering systems are prone to schedule slips, budget over runs, and a variety of challenges that compromise delivered value. These challenges are a sign of failure on the part of both management and technical roles, but can be overcome through a Risk Aware Framework that integrates the roles into a cohesive systemic and systematic approach to delivering high-value business outcomes. This article shows how your organization can become more effective, more efficient, and more responsive, and enjoy better business outcomes by bridging the gap between Systems Engineering and Program Management via a Risk Aware Framework.

This Executive Update aims to answer two questions: Why should we be benchmarking risk management? And why don't more companies do this?

For a scrum team to be successful, it is important to learn of and solve problems as they occur. As we work together, we express how we’re doing, what’s in our way, and our concerns so they can be addressed. It’s an ongoing process of improvement from sprint to sprint. There are as many team dynamics as there are teams, so sometimes getting started is awkward if people feel uncomfortable opening up. As we explore in this Advisor, sustained success demands a brave willingness to be “all in.”

Politics. The word alone is enough to strike terror into the hearts of bright, energetic, and dedicated IT professionals. In this article my co-author Fran Mackin and I describe strategies for personal political survival. We list the characteristics of a successful politician. We explain how as a principled politician to control the political landscape or it will control you.

This is the first in a three-part Executive Update series that applies the rules of effective leadership to the challenging role and tasks of project management. The series is based on research done in The Leadership Code by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman.

This Executive Update is the second in a three-part series, based on research presented in The Leadership Code by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman. In Part I we began applying the rules of effective leadership to the challenging role and tasks of project management through the seven principles of personal proficiency.

This Executive Update is the third in a three-part series, based on research presented in The Leadership Code by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman. Here in Part III, we will discuss long-term orientation: how the great project manager must be both a strategist and a human capital developer. In doing so, we will examine the final two rules for effective leadership: "Shape the Future" and "Build the Next Generation."

Our behavior style is based on other people’s perceptions of us, not on how we see ourselves. There is no good or bad style. We all, unconsciously, seek out others who have a style similar to our own, and we can all tell, again unconsciously, who has such a style and who doesn’t. Having the knowledge to predict the interaction problems we may encounter with other people provides us with a basis for improving the quality of our interactions. This improvement in our “situational awareness” gives us the ability to better control the outcomes of our interactions with others.

Because change involves risk, it is important that software process improvement (SPI) is properly managed to both reduce an individual's anxiety toward that change, and also to provide the company with a competitive advantage.

In this article my co-author Dr. Robert N. Charette and I  would like you to think about in this story is the idea of system requirements -- such as the requirement for a collision avoidance system -- as descriptors or maybe better "place-holders" outlining a picture of the future.

With a structured and well-facilitated approach, one can move quickly and carefully to build/rebuild and manage the project portfolio your company requires to face challenges today —while also laying the critical next stepsfor prosperity tomorrow.

How can we identify and verify the organizational working cultures that describe the rules of engagement being used by the stakeholders in all parts of the organization on a day-to-day basis?

Before enterprise-level risks outgrow your capabilities to manage them, you need to aggressively analyze mishaps, learn about potential risks, and take early steps to monitor and control them.

Stakeholders in an organization do certain things in certain ways to meet what they believe to be their job responsibilities. Their actions are based on their perceptions of the best results for them within their framework of reference with as little effort as possible. This Executive Update explores some tools and techniques that have been used to successfully deal with and manage this hidden culture.

In this article my co-author Bob Thomas and I describe how history is a great teacher, and illustrates the consequences of a risk inspired by ego that is set in motion and not reassessed. Operation Market Garden was a big risk, but two pitfalls built into the hopeful plans turned it into merely a gamble: making hasty decisions and refusing to reverse decisions. Sound familiar?

We all, unconsciously, seek out others who have a style similar to our own, and we can all tell, again unconsciously, who has such a style and who doesn’t. Having the knowledge to predict the interaction problems we may encounter with other people provides us with a basis for improving the quality of our interactions. This improvement in our “situational awareness” gives us the ability to better control the outcomes of our interactions with others.

I recently caught up with the Vice President of Information Technology (I'll call him "VP-IT") at a leading midsized company to hear his candid reflections about dealing with SOX and surviving the "absolute nightmare" of 2004. In the following interview, we explore the successful struggles that followed "being hit like a brick" with what seemed to be very broad-reaching statements found in the SOX legislation.

For leaders of corporations, risk management has become a top concern in the face of increasing demand for greater corporate accountability as well as world events that have changed the risk landscape and its impact on the business world.

On the road to software quality, life happens. Even for someone who’s really passionate about software quality, it’s hard to focus on quality for long because other things intervene. In this article my co-author Fran Mackin and I offer tips for surviving the journey when life happens.