Currently I am tracking 85 blogs related to "Project Management". Last month I found these ten postings highly remarkable and interesting:

Conspiracy vs. Collaboration
Place Those Small Bets, Quickly!
The Definitive List of Software Development Methodologies
Systems
How to Write a Book
5 Ways to Be A Naturally Visible Leader
Thoughts on Austhink Software's work with Business Decision Mapping
I need to build a house, what kind of hammer should I buy?
Living, Learning and Leading in an Increasingly Virtual World
Professionalism = Knowledge First, Experience Last

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When your company is struggling with projects, when all Project Managers are PMP certified, when every conceivable procedure seems to be in place, it is time to turn to The Fifth Discipline. No, this is not some kind of dark society. It is the art of creating a learning organization. Ever since Peter Senge put forth the idea of "five disciplines" in the early 1990s, business management thinking has not been the same.

This article takes a brief look at each of the disciplines espoused by Senge, which, according to him, are the hallmarks of a "learning" organization:

• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Systems Thinking
• Shared vision, and
• Team learning.

In the backdrop of software projects, systems thinking, personal mastery and mental models work on the level of the individual, while the concept of shared vision and team learning have more to do with team dynamics. This is applicable for the project manager / leader as well as the team member. Every discipline will have relevant links to articles on Project Shrink, so you can plan ideas for improvement.

Personal Mastery

Photography by Mind meal.
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I love Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG), the ones that are life changing, the ones that make your existence worthwhile, the ones that make you feel powered up like an energizer bunny. Goals like the one Al Gore is presenting in his "Challenge To Repower America":

"Power all US energy within 10 years with non-carbon based fuel" or "100% Clean Energy in 10 Years".

WOW. Now THAT is a goal. A big one. A hairy one.

Of course, I can complain about him not including the rest of the world. I could look under every rock trying to find small dubious details about Big Al's motivations. But as Ghandi put it: "We must be the change we wish to see." And I think, Project Managers must be the change if we want to reach goals like this one.

Entrepreneurs see the opportunity.
Venture capitalist provide the money.
Scientist invent the breakthrough.
Project Managers kill the thing by providing "the proper process"… Death by compliance.

We as Project Managers have to rise to this occasion. Why does this matter?

People will turn to us to get thing done. We are the Getting-Things-Done-Squad! We have to drive these changes trough the swamp of corporate and global politics; we have to go full speed with zero-visibility; we have to make it all fit together in the end. There is no time for ass covering, compliance-for-compliance-sake, review-upon-review, no-you-cannot-change Project Management.

Be the change. It matters.

Software Projects are about humans… They've always been. During my study, I got inspired by Barry Boehm's Theory W, everything Fred Brooks has written, Tom DeMaro and Tom Lister, and Alistair Cockburn (for me the only person that has written intensively about the link between choice of project approach and human related issues!)

Alistair has written a great article in this months issue of CrossTalk: Good Old Advice.

"With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the best-known writers in the software field have been advocating the same four recommendations written in the agile manifesto for decades … The older writers were ignored for decades while people searched for mechanical replacements for the key elements in developing software: thinking and communicating. But that’s a separate story. It Is About People."

Yes everyone, IT IS ALL ABOUT PEOPLE.
It has always been.
It will always be.

We know it for decades.
Somehow, we just forget.

(Hat tip to Ray for pointing me to this article)

You can tell, can't you? It is a dead give away… I cannot stop thinking about resilience!

Check out the Youtube channel of The Stockholm Resilience Centre, it has informational short videos about …. resilience… like this one: What Is Resilience?



If you like podcasts, how about one hour "Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Turbulent Times"?

"Resilience…the capacity to absorb shocks to the system without losing the ability to function. Can whole societies become resilient in the face of traumatic change? In April 2008, natural and social scientists from around the world gathered in Stockholm, Sweden for a first-ever global conference applying lessons from nature’s resilience to human societies in the throes of unprecedented transition."

Panarchy provides us a wide angle lens to look at projects. Originating from socio-ecological field studies this powerful concept lets us capture the project, the individual team members and the embedding organization in one go. Previously I discussed the ideas behind Panarchy: the adaptive cycle, multiple scales and the interaction of multiple scales. In this post, I'll explore what these aspects mean for resilience, the capacity, e.g. of a project to adapt to changes.

Photography by t3rmin4t0r.

The interactions between the different scales across a panarchy are important in respect to resilience. In terms of Panarchy, three elements are considered: the focal system (in our case "the project"), the higher scales (e.g. the company, or professional group, or society) and the lower scales (e.g. individuals or teams).
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