Project Shrink

In episode 17 Dave and Bas discuss the Wired article “The Phone Call Is Dead” by Clive Thompson and Dave’s upcoming presentation at Agile 2010 in Orlando called “Why you suck at off shoring, even with Agile“. He will be presenting together with Thushara Wijewardena. Click here if you want to subscribe to this podcast [...]

People cluster together. We form groups for economic and social reasons. What if we could use our natural tendency for social clustering as a way to drive teams? What if we could create conditions that would attract “the right people”? What if those “right people” would “trust” all other member in the group, just because [...]

Every moment in a project has a specific set of topics and discussions you would expect. During the start up “planning” and “scope”, just before delivery “creating the final build” and “acceptance”. If you are in a room with your team it happens very often that a talk between people in the same room morphs [...]

In episode 33 of The Project Shrink Chalyce Nollsh (PM Bistro) is talking about the flip side of social media; some words of caution when using new media as a Project Manager. In this presentation, recorded at the PMI Global Congress in Orlando, she discusses the following topics: New Media Never Sleeps Without Business Value, [...]

If you want to have a self-managed team (and you really want that), you need to agree on the means of the project, the rules of engagement. One set of rules for everyone. Everyone should know the same set of rules… Humans … have “rules” about how we do things “around here”. It is not [...]

In episode 20 of The Project Shrink Podcast I am talking to Jerome Breche and Jerome Mouton from TimZon. TimZon is a new tool for asynchronous video discussions. Skype and other video conferencing solutions are great for the little time per day when the team members are available. But with teams for instance in India [...]

How to use social media successfully in projects, is described in the Harvard Business Review article: “Can Absence Make A Team Grow Stronger”. The article is from 2004, and they are not mentioning “social media”, they discuss “virtual workspaces”. But the two concepts are strikingly similar. The article describes three rules to create successful virtual [...]

How to use social media successfully in projects, is described in the Harvard Business Review article by Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack: “Can Absence Make A Team Grow Stronger”. The article is from 2004, and they are not mentioning “social media”, they discuss “virtual workspaces”. But the two concepts are strikingly [...]

Do you want to know how Social Media can be used to boost project success? Do you? We already know the answer for a couple of years. But not everyone is looking for it in the right direction. Virtual teams. In 2004 the Harvard Business Review published a great article by Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, [...]

Ants don’t need central control to get the work coordinated. They use a simple and effective way to communicate and make individual decisions based upon the information. Ants are hardwired to work like this. Nature provided them all with the same set of rules in their body. Every leg has a natural tattoo describing how [...]