The problem with Dilbert is simple: it is the truth. Yes, I really had a boss with pointy hair. Yes, he was clueless. Yes, to enter the marketing department, you really need a two drink minimum. Dilbert is not a cartoon about working in a large company; it is a documentary of working in a large company.

Photography by Ol.v!er.

If things are going sad in your project, laughing over a Dilbert comic with your colleagues can be quite stress reducing. Yes, our corporate politics are killing morale¦ But look! We are not the only place were this happens! Shared misery seems to be good misery. And I know what I am talking about. I have survived a lot of meetings playing Bullshit Bingo, so dont get me started about trying to hang in a loony bin environment.

But make no mistake, it is a survival technique; a way you are emotionally coping with a totally sick environment. I have seen offices plastered with Dilbert comics. The people that occupy these offices all have an eerie smile on their face. A look like someone standing in a pile of poop, being filmed for an entry in Funniest Home Videos.

Once in a while a shot of Dilbert will not hurt your project; it will even be beneficial. But a office wallpapered with the guy is a clear sign of low morale. And we all know that low morale means another project down the drain.

Yesterday I came across "The Origins Of Modern Project Management" by Patrick Weaver. It is an interesting view on how Project Management emerged, and where it will be heading. It is a kind of combination between my "How Male Machismo Shaped Project Management" and "Projects As Social Interactions"… but a little less funky, and more properly researched

If you are interested in this subject (and every PM should be!), I recommend this article.

Sometimes things are so obvious to me, that I forget that there are people around that might not know about it: in this case I am talking about the power of website feeds. This is how I keep my Project Management knowledge on the edge, this is the way how I educate myself on my profession… And the best part of it… It's all free.

More and more websites about Project Management are publishing their content in a so-called RSS feed. This is just a small xml stream that allows an application to get the articles and display them to a reader. The best part of this is that a reader can handle thousands of website feeds, so you only have to look at your reader and you will have the latest information available. No more surfing around!

Last summer I really changed the speed of learning on Project Management. I started using Google Reader to read almost a hundred blogs and other websites. Every morning I log into the free reader and I can read all the articles about Project Management, just like a newspaper. Heck, better than my newspaper!

For me it was an eye opener…!

If you don't use Google Reader yet, open a free account …

Your reader will first be empty, you have to subscribe to website feeds. You do this by entering a feed address.

My feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/projectshrink

Every website that displays this image has a feed. Just enter the website address in the subscribe box, and you will be fine.

I publish the best articles I find on other blogs about Project Management. You can also subscribe to that feed, so you only get the best of the best

The address for that feed is: http://www.softwareprojects.org/reader

This summer I asked myself two questions (well, some more, but who cares about my favorite pizza):

1) why is the most popular way of doing Project Management plan driven?
2) why did agile methods pop up during the mid-nineties and not earlier or later?

My answer to the second question is this months featured paper in PM World Today: "Why Agile Popped Up on the Radar When it Did"

For those who missed it, I answered question number one in last months issue.