"A clear-eyed call to reevaluate project-based teams in the days of remote work." –Publishers Weekly, BookLife review

For decades, organizations of all sizes and in all industries have struggled at managing projects. Even though employees primarily worked together in physical offices, rare was the project that came in on time and on budget and delivered what stakeholders expected.

The M-F/9-5 in-person world of work is gone forever. Depending on the country, more than nine in ten people would rather quit their jobs than return to the office five days per week. Brass tacks: Remote and hybrid workplaces are here to stay, and they pose formidable obstacles that complicate managing projects and launching new products.

Against this backdrop arrives Project Management in the Hybrid Workplace, Phil Simon’s timely and highly anticipated follow-up to his award-winning book Reimagining Collaboration.

In his inimitable style, Simon adeptly fuses critical research and concepts from a slew of diverse and seemingly unrelated fields, including Agile software development, human resources, supply chain management, cognitive psychology, organizational behavior, and labor economics. Brimming with detailed case studies, penetrating insights, and practical advice, Simon’s twelfth book is a tour de force. Product owners, new and seasoned PMs, service providers, freelancers, small business owners, and students taking PM classes will benefit from Project Management in the Hybrid Workplace.

• Hold group video calls
• Install time-saving, third-party apps
• Dramatically improve the way that you communicate and collaborate with your colleagues
• Enable Zoom roles, IM groups, user groups, and other advanced features
• Easily move from one communications medium to another
• Engage your audience with interactive webinars
• Secure Zoom from prying eyes
• And much more.

For years, organizations have struggled to make sense out of their data. IT projects designed to provide employees with dashboards, KPIs, and business-intelligence tools often take a year or more to reach the finish line...if they get there at all.

This has always been a problem. Today, though, it's downright unacceptable. The world changes faster than ever. Speed has never been more important. By adhering to antiquated methods, firms lose the ability to see nascent trends—and act upon them until it's too late.

But what if the process of turning raw data into meaningful insights didn't have to be so painful, time-consuming, and frustrating?

What if there were a better way to do analytics?

Fortunately, you're in luck...

Analytics: The Agile Way is the eighth book from award-winning author and Arizona State University professor Phil Simon.

Analytics: The Agile Way demonstrates how progressive organizations such as Google, Nextdoor, and others approach analytics in a fundamentally different way. They are applying the same Agile techniques that software developers have employed for years. They have replaced large batches in favor of smaller ones...and their results will astonish you.

Through a series of case studies and examples, Analytics: The Agile Way demonstrates the benefits of this new analytics mind-set: superior access to information, quicker insights, and the ability to spot trends far ahead of your competitors.

Winner: International Book Award, Business: Communications/Public Relations

Microsoft Teams. Slack. Zoom. Google Workspace.

Every day, hundreds of millions of people use these über-popular collaboration tools, but only in decidedly limited ways: as email and Skype replacements. Because these folks are merely scratching the surface of what these robust collaboration hubs can do, they fail to realize their massive benefits.

Blame ignorance, not malice. With rare exception, organizations, executives, and rank-and-file employees have historically worked in piecemeal fashions. They have lacked a holistic framework to fully understand the remarkable power of these applications, much less unleash them.

At least until now.

Reimagining Collaboration—the eleventh book from award-winning author and world-renowned collaboration expert Phil Simon—provides this essential gestalt. Simon introduces a bold new model of work. Ideal for HR professionals, knowledge workers, executives, remote workers, and small business owners, this timely, ambitious, and provocative book offers concrete tips for companies and groups on how to transform the way they work by embracing hubs and spokes.

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior.

How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer lies deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions.

It's time to start thinking big.

In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate.

Too Big to Ignore explains why Big Data is a big deal. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.

More than a buzzword, agile is a powerful business tool for all.

To the uninitiated, agile is a software development and project management process involving white boards, colored Post-it Notes, and stand-up meetings. It may seem as though agile doesn’t and won't ever apply to you. But agile is here to stay, and its benefits can be realized beyond IT and project management into other areas of your business. If you're a leader, it's worth exploring how your group can benefit from the higher productivity and morale agile brings.

Agile: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review brings you today's most essential thinking on agile, from exploring the conditions under which agile is most effective and easiest to implement to reducing new-product development risk to bringing the most valuable products and features to market faster and more predictably. The lessons in this book will help you introduce agile into a broader range of activities and accelerate profitable growth for your company.

Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?
Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.

• Create a space for a healthy work–life balance
• Stay connected with Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams
• Maintain productivity and stay healthy and sane

Working from home is the new normal

Working from home was already on the rise, but when COVID-19 hijacked our reality, it became a way of life for many. Whether you're doing it one or two days a week or full-time, you'll appreciate the guidance in this book. Here are tried-and-true tips for enhancing your productivity, creating a workspace that's pleasant and efficient, dealing with distractions, making the most of virtual meetings, maintaining the trust of your manager and teammates, and a whole lot more.

Inside...

• Make online meetings more productive
• Get in the right headspace
• Set necessary boundaries and expectations
• Maintain effective connection with team members
• Learn to stay focused