Recently John Hunter reached out to me to participate in the 2010 Year in Review Carnival. Being one of those people who says “yes” to everything, I jumped in and chose three different blogs to review. All three of them are new to me, but there is some great content! Let’s get rolling. I’ll link to the blog and then provide links to my four favorite posts by them in the previous year. If you see something you like, feel free to click through. Each link opens in a new web browser window so you don’t lose track of this page.

Making IT Clear

• Two Questions to Ask After Each Project is Completed-want to do better next time? Look at these two critical questions to help you improve.
• Which Do You Have? A Job, a Profession, a Career, or a Passion? I love the breakdown on these terms. Sometimes it’s tough to admit we have a “job,” but maybe that admission is necessary to help lead us toward our own passion?
• 6 Things I\’d Like to Tell Your Boss about IT-Love the down-to-earth points in this one. Great overview of where tech stands today.
• The 7 Biggest Challenges of a Manager-I enjoy writing about managing people, and this post outlines some of the most critical points for managers to understand. Fantastic stuff.

Lean Leaders Blog

• Connecting is at the Heart of Developing People: Relationships-This post brings us back to the fact that any organizational changes, mentoring, or engagement is useless without first forming a personal connection with the receiver.
• Your Culture is Your Brand-Best quote from this post: “Successful people and organizations work on culture and then work on it some more and never take it for granted.“
• Thanks Chief, but you really aren’t in charge…The talk that has to happen-It’s always tough telling a superior or senior leader that they can’t do something, but sometimes that talk just has to happen. This is a great explanation of how to make that conversation less painful.
• Know the Goal…Are you being productive, or are you just busy? This post kicks off with a quote by Heinlein and frames the whole idea nicely. “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.“

Girl’s Guide to Project Management

• Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects: Take the free course! I love finding great, free stuff. If you click  this link you can find out how to get a free email course on using social media for project management. Neat stuff!
• Zombie Project Management-I am a fan of zombies here (as long-time readers know), and this post is just another example of how zombies are destroying our organizations from the inside out. Check it out!
• Scope creep, shopping-style! We’ve all had scope creep knock us on the back of the head while we are hip deep in a project. This is a little personal story about how Elizabeth realizes her project is out of control.
• Project Management Book Reviews-This one isn’t a post. It links to a category about book reviews, because as I scanned the archives of 2010, there were more than a dozen of them in there, and I think they are valuable tools to help people read more. If you’re looking for books on project management, this is the link for you!

And just like that, we are finished! I had a lot of fun checking out the great posts and hope you find something valuable in there. Like what you see? You can find more at the Curious Cat Management Carnival 2010 post.