Top Three Articles
2018 Year in Review
21 January 2019
I’ve compiled a review of 2018. This post highlights my consulting business, book, speaking appearances, and blog.
Business
Organizations need to realize their strategic objectives and business initiatives. My professional services firm, Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™, helps our clients achieve those needs through advisory, training, and facilitative consulting services related to project, program, portfolio, and PMO management. Our expertise spans agile, traditional waterfall, and hybrid development and delivery frameworks. To learn more about the company, please visit http://exceptional-pmo.com.
A book and speaking appearances—extensions of Exceptional PPM and PMO Solutions™—are highlighted individually below.
Book
Inspired by a fantastic agile transformation experience and result with a client in the entertainment industry, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions was published in 2016. It helps technical and non-technical teams develop and deliver products in short cycles with rapid adaptation to change, fast time-to-market, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage. Between the date of publication and 2017, it garnered 15 first place awards from national and international competitions. The credit is shared with Chris Hare and Colin Giffen, the technical editors on the book.
Attention and interest continued in 2018. Accolades included two additional first place awards (making the updated total 17), being featured as a success story by the BEA, and more. And Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and I were featured in Yahoo Finance, Innovation Management, Informa Middle East, and additional media publications.
To make the book available to more sellers and customers, I transitioned it to Expanded Distribution in 2018. With the change, both the print and ebook formats of Agile Scrum were still available at Amazon, just not exclusively. Expanded Distribution provided access to a larger audience through more online retailers, bookstores, libraries, academic institutions, and distributors. Agile Scrum became available through the following channels (in addition to Amazon):
- Bookstores and Online Retailers - available to online and offline retailers such as Barnes & Noble and to distributors such as Ingram and the National Association of College Stores, Inc. (NACSCORP).
- Libraries and Academic Institutions - offered through Baker & Taylor to libraries and academic institutions.
- CreateSpace Direct - available to certified resellers through the CreateSpace Direct wholesale website.
Agile Scrum is still offered in print and digital formats at Amazon. The paperback is available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The ebook is for sale in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
A trailer, high-resolution images, reviews, a detailed list of awards, and more on Agile Scrum are available in the digital media kit at https://AgileScrumGuide.com.
Speaking Appearances
I've been fortunate to have spoken to diverse audiences on project, program, portfolio, and PMO management related topics of timely importance. I delivered five talks at conferences and other events in 2018:
- Techstars conference
- California Central Coast chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI)
- California Inland Empire chapter of the PMI
- An event in Las Vegas
- California Central Valley chapter of the PMI
Upcoming appearances in 2019 include the Project World conference in Canada, another talk at a PMI chapter, and more—to be announced. You can read more about my speaking engagements at http://bit.ly/SpeakerOne.
Blog
My blog at http://scottgraffius.com/blog provides news, tips, and more on the intersection of project management with business and technology. In 2018, I published 48 new articles on the site. That’s down from last year, when I produced 65. However, traffic has been steadily growing per data from Google Analytics. In 2018, the blog had 109,771 page views, compared with 57,139 the prior year. That’s an increase of 92%!
There was a mix of different categories of topics. The top 10 articles in 2018 were:
- Phases of Team Development
- Yahoo Finance: Scott M. Graffius to Speak at Techstars Startup Week
- The Potentially Shippable Product Increment and a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Approach
- The Importance of Managing Work in Progress (WIP)
- Scott M. Graffius Featured in Success Story by BEA
- Are Agile and Scrum Limited to Technology Projects or Technology Industries?
- "Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions" Quoted in Innovation Management
- Q&A with Author Chris Hare: Transforming Project Management into Time-Saving, Stress-Relieving Solutions for Parents of K-12 Students
- Scott M. Graffius to Serve as Subject Matter Expert Reviewer of Content for Project Management Institute EMEA Congress 2019
- The Holiday Nice List: 11 Gifts to Impress
The majority of visitors (53%) came from the United States. Rounding out the top 10 were France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Philippines, Brazil, India, Australia, and Sweden. While not in the top 10 for the year, there was a significant increase in traffic (primarily in late 2018) from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Japan.
Thank you for visiting the blog!
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