27 articles in Project Management
Research showing that of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. The 'progress principle': even small wins boost inner work life tremendously, while small losses have an outsized negative effect. Managers should remove barriers and catalyze progress. Links to Kanban visualization of work flow.
A comprehensive guide to the four phases of project management: planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout. Covers the iron triangle of scope, time, and cost constraints, and how to balance them. Includes practical tools for work breakdown structures, risk management, and stakeholder communication. A foundational reference for PM certification.
Introduces earned value management (EVM) as a quantitative method for measuring project progress against both schedule and budget baselines. Explains key metrics—CPI, SPI, EAC—that give project managers early warning signals when projects drift off track.
The pre-mortem technique asks team members to imagine that a project has already failed spectacularly and then work backward to identify causes, overcoming the optimism and groupthink that plague traditional risk assessment. Klein's research shows that pre-mortems increase the ability to identify potential problems by 30% compared to standard risk workshops. The technique works because it grants permission to express doubt, leverages prospective hindsight, and transforms critics from obstacles into assets.
Kahneman and Lovallo explain why we systematically underestimate time, costs, and risks while overestimating benefits. The planning fallacy: taking an 'inside view' focused on the specific case rather than the 'outside view' based on similar past projects. Introduces reference class forecasting as a corrective. Essential for project management and strategic planning courses.
Defines what separates real teams from working groups. A team is a small number of people with complementary skills, committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Covers the team performance curve from working group to high-performance team. A foundational text in organizational behavior courses.
Brooks' timeless insights from managing the IBM System/360 project. Adding people to a late software project makes it later. The essential complexity of software cannot be removed by any process improvement. Covers conceptual integrity, the surgical team model, and why there is no silver bullet in software engineering. Still the most-cited text in software project management education.