Every month, a selection of the top PPM articles from around the Web.
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April 2021, a month filled with interesting articles offering the know how to choosing the right KPIs, killing the bad projects and selecting the right communication channel.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION THIS MONTH
Have we taken Agile too far? Agile is a highly effective tool for product development, especially software-driven offerings. But as companies expand its use into new areas (budgeting, talent management), Agile is too often used an excuse to avoid careful planning and preparation. A better approach could be to combine Agile with something like Amazon's "Work Backwards" technique. (7 min read)
How to choose the right KPIs for your product. Roman Pichler offers a three-step approach to help select the most effective metrics to understand if your product is creating the desired value for the users, the customers, and the business. (7 min read)
How to get better at killing bad projects.Three modifications to your stage-gate process can help ensure that you're stopping projects efficiently, based on a decade-long review of the product development portfolio at former handset maker Sony Ericsson. (8 min read)
Three ways to migrate data faster. By tagging essential data that must be migrated; leaving behind “nice-to-have” data; and lowering data quality standards, even if it's only by less than 1%, organizations can avoid costly failures. (4 min read)
How one financial institution addressed its anti-money laundering issues with Scrum. There aren't that many articles that tell a true story of how Scrum helped to bring value. Willem-Jan Ageling offers a detailed account of how one Dutch financial institution used Scrum to go from "problem child" to "best-in-class". (15 min read)
There will always be people who want to kill change. Here's how to outsmart them. If you expect to bring meaningful change about, planning to overcome resistance has to be a primary design constraint and an organizing principle. (7 min read)
The best answers are not the obvious ones. There are always different approaches to making change happen. Our usual reflex is to look at the engineering solution, to drive harder, but in fact, understanding the human perception of the experience is the only thing that usually matters. When you do, the answers are often completely counter-intuitive. (2 min read)
How to select the right communication channel. Teams are smart at channel selection when they use high-bandwidth channels for solving complex problems and low bandwidth channels for simple ones. (4 min read)
If you love your decisions let them go. There are times when you just know that your decisions are right. The data says so, the experts say so, but your colleagues or stakeholders disagree. Sometimes, the best way to get them to accept your decision is to give it up altogether. Here's how it works. (7 min read)
A WELCOME REMINDER
Efficiency is getting stuff done. Effectiveness is getting the right stuff done. Technology aids us with the first. Your brain still has to facilitate the second.