Category Archives: Book

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Scaling Lean by Ash Maurya

Business Cases are Dead, Create Business Models & Metrics that can scale a business by 10x

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Business Model Planning for Project Teams

Ash Maurya Scaling Lean

Ash has another trailblazing book following his success of Running Lean. Is your “big idea” worth pursuing? What if you could test your business model earlier in the process—before you’ve expended valuable time and resources?

Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works, created a breakthrough way of looking at all the business model components needed for new product launches. This book looks at key questions of:

Scaling Lean looks at key questions of:
– Is this business idea worth pursuing,
– What are key metrics, and
– What areas are riskiest at early learning stages of growth?

This book is required reading for any engineering, product management or project office (PMO) leader pursuing growth strategies in their portfolio. Note: Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization.

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Agile Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) Project Managers

Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing by Ken W. Collier

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Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing by Ken W. Collier

Agile Analytics is a groundbreaking book. It provides practical approaches to transition BI & DW projects to Agile. I quickly read it cover to cover as it provided key insights into how to make established BI & DW projects more Agile and therefore more failure-proof.

This book leverages Jim Highsmith’s Agile Project Management (APM) framework based on an Envision ->Explore cycle rather than the Plan -> Do approach. This paradigm shift aims to address uncertainty in our project teams. This uncertainty has been addressed in a programmatic, waterfall way in the past. And Lots of Projects have Failed.

Ken provides a very clear and readable book which walks teams through transitioning to Agile. He provides many examples of collaboration between team stakeholders throughout the project life cycle that adapt the Envision -> Explore approach to the amount of change experienced by BI & DW teams.

This book elegantly speaks to both business sponsors and technical team members. For Project Managers it provides some of the best examples of early planning, user stories, and use Case Diagrams I have seen for BI/DW projects.

Ken has provided thoughtful insights on how to increase Agility:

  • Solid Tools – Needed for BI exploration to increase the speed of team and ability to share insights with users/customers.
  • Agile Infrastructure – Realigning systems such as config management and testing infrastructure can be significant, yet often, underestimated part of project planning.
  • Agile workmanship – Even with solid tools & infrastructure, there is a learning curve for development teams.
  • Agile architecture – Make Up Front Design (UFD) more Agile by leveraging proven architectures or patterns; quickly.
  • Customer Commitment – BI projects still require external input into planning, capability definition and feature prioritization. So incorporating user education on how results are pulled, calculated and displayed is very important to allow them to be effective in their roles.

Click here to see book on Amazon.  Note:  I live in California and therefore do not receive any compensation for this recommendation. That said. I just like the book.

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Statistics for Project Managers

Even You Can Learn STATISTICS and ANALYTICS: An easy to Understand Guide to Statistics and Analytics by David M. Levin and David F. Stephan

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Skills for Analytics Project Managers

Analytics or Big Data Project Manager Required Reading

Launching new projects is hard work for project managers. You have new people, politics, policies and processes you need to figure out – FAST! Now if you have just been assigned an analytics or Big Data project, you have new buzz words to figure out.

Every analytics or big data project manager needs “Even You Can Learn STATISTICS and ANALYTICS: An easy to Understand Guide to Statistics and Analytics by David M. Levin and David F. Stephan. This is a marvelous read. It presents a concept, then examples and then further explanations which it calls Interpretation.

This 3rd edition adds a new chapter on Analytics concepts, new chapters on descriptive and predictive analytical methods. This is a fast and fun read. It isn’t quite beach reading yet is easy to read and to skip to areas which apply to your projects.

Click here to go to Amazon.  Note:  I live in California and therefore receive no money for this Amazon recommendation.