Welcome to the April edition of Streamline! There is a new kid on the block, and they are called the Scrum Police... Will you be turned in for infraction against Agile? :D
What caught our attention in March
What HBO's "Succession" can teach us about negotiating. The season four opener features a contest between media tycoon Logan Roy and his children to acquire another media empire. The episode showcases classic mistakes that negotiators often make in high-stakes situations. (8 min read)
For IT to function better, the business side of the company has to get more involved. The sooner the business treats IT as a strategic capability, the sooner it can harness the technology it needs to deliver value. (16 min read)
Learn to defend yourself against the dark art of graph manipulation. Manipulative graphs are 100% accurate but misleading. They show true data but go through some “tweaking” to better support the story being told. (8 min read)
When your organization's size gets to the boundary of a "Power of 3," then former structures deteriorate. As an organization grows, it faces numerous challenges that impact effectiveness, productivity, and profitability. Understanding the relationship between organizational design and organization size is crucial. (7 min read)
To make the right innovation decisions, you need to understand which world you are in: Explore or Exploit? Innovation and Finance regularly clash over the ROI of new innovation projects. The key leadership skill is to identify what world the project is in, set the right expectations in terms of ROI and ask the right questions at the right time. (7 min read)
8 Steps to Building a World-Class PMO
Build a PMO that satisfies your project managers and stakeholders in just 8 steps.
Don't try to shape opinions, shape networks. The truth is that the best indicator of what people do and think is what the people around them do and think. (6 min read)
If you design for "average", that's all you'll be. Only self-obsessed narcissists like endlessly talking about themselves. Normal people would much rather talk with their friends about a cool thing. But being the “cool thing” is an almost impossible task if all you’re telling people is the same story as everyone else. (2 min read)
Measuring all your Work in Progress (WIP) can help make better decisions. Johanna Rothman illustrates why measuring just the number of projects and the number of products is not enough. (5 min read)
Six influence tactics are good bets if you want to foster the cooperation necessary to enable organizational change: rational persuasion, inspirational appeal, apprising, collaboration, ingratiation, and consultation (but NOT pressure). (5 min read)
Our project management future is analog. Kiron Bondale argues that, instead of replacing Project Managers, AI will allow them much more time to focus on analog activities such as engaging effectively with their key stakeholders, or building high performing teams. (3 min read)
We try to buy thoughts ready-made and guaranteed to fit, in the shape of systems installed by experts. We try to substitute discussion for thought by organizing committees; a committee may function very well indeed as a clearinghouse for thoughts, but more commonly a committee organization is just an elaborate means of fooling oneself into believing that a spell spent in talking is the same as a spell spent in thinking.
Harvey S. Firestone via Farnam Street
