Posts By Josh Nankivel

Project Transparency

One of my teams is transitioning from using Kanban to Scrum for discrete development. We’ll probably continue using both because some of what we do is specific to a particular release of a product, and some of the work is support work. I’m excited because we are taking another step in the right direction towardsRead… Read more »

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Project Manager of the Year

Is an inspiration. In 1975, Viet Nguyen was a young Vietnamese refugee. Now he is the USACE Project Manager of the Year for 2012. As reported by Jasmine Chopra-Delgadillo, it’s an amazing American story. Please read Jasmine’s excellent write-up. Right now, Viet is serving in Afghanistan managing several major construction projects. One of several projectsRead… Read more »

Agile Responds to the Top 5 Challenges For Project Managers

This is a response to a great summary of the recent survey posted here: https://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/project-managers-top-5-challenges 1. Time constraints Get Agile. Release in iterative cycles instead of a monolithic delivery. It allows for better evaluation of progress, forecasting, and customer feedback. 2. Setting a goal and sticking to it Get Agile. Use cases and user storiesRead… Read more »

Project Communication Fail

A classic post for me is titled“Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™”. The article cites a few sources that conclude: “…that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes.” I love the term quoted in the post, “organizational silence” to describe whenRead… Read more »

What’s Your Leadership Style?

I’m sure this isn’t scientific, but I came across this leadership style quiz and had a go: http://psychology.about.com/library/quiz/bl-leadershipquiz.htm My results: Your results indicate that your leadership style is predominately: Delegative Delegative Leadership Delegative leaders allow group members to make decisions. This style is best used in situations where the leader needs to rely on qualifiedRead… Read more »