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When considering outsourcing, how can you ensure you get the best deal and optimise your operations? Ask the following four simple questions of any IT/vendor/outsourcing relationship that you are about to enter into and you can assess how suited to your brief that action path is. 1 - Has the sharp s...

There was a time when collaborations between music artists were a rarity. Queen and David Bowie, George Michael and Aretha Franklin, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross ... they stood out. It was quite exciting when your favourite artist teamed up with someone else because the outcome was always something ...

"Have you ever wondered why over half of IT Projects fail?" said the voice on the other end of the phone. The cold caller hadn't ingratiated himself by calling me "Dave". I'm David. It's not that I mind "Dave". It's just not my name. Quite an assumption too, I mean, I wonder if he'd open a call to s...

As I write this we have just entered the second quarter of 2017, Spring is looming, the daffodils are blooming and the year is zooming by. I don't know about you, but my thoughts have already started to turn to the summer and specifically the annual family holiday - our chance to relax, unwind and c...

"It's a poor workman who blames his tools." I heard this, for the first time in years, during the analysis of why an IT Project had failed to deliver. It got me thinking. Is it true? Is Project success more a product of the skills of a project team than the tools that they use? Or is it the case tha...

In recent weeks, I've observed that there seem to be three ways of communicating 'news' in IT Projects. i) To communicate the news, update or information half as big as it is in reality. ii) To communicate the news, update or information twice as big as it is in reality. iii) To communicate the news...

LinkedIn recently listed the Most Promising Jobs of 2017 and it turns out that the Project Manager's skill set is a perfect fit for many of the top ten roles. Technical Program Managers and Scrum Masters, for instance, both score high based on all the data sets crunched by LinkedIn. Given the PMI's ...

Project Management is the second most boring job in the world, according to a recent study. When you factor in that working in IT also makes the top ten you would be forgiven for imagining that all IT Project Managers must be constantly nodding off on the job. Who did they ask? It reminds me of a re...

IT Project prioritisation is crucial for your organisation. Selecting the wrong projects, which don't deliver strategic value or the required ROI can impact the bottom line and mean that your business reduces its chance of hitting targets and achieving goals. You should take a day or two (or longer ...

I just gave some seemingly contrary advice. "You need to be more solid, steady, dependable, consistent - you're all over the place," I told an experienced IT Project Manager friend who is having one of those blips where nothing goes right. "OK, how?" he asked. I thought and answered, "You need to be...

IR35 is going to shake up public sector IT buying, and so having a more intuitive, functional and relevant G-Cloud is a very positive step towards mitigating the potential pain Back in the day, in response to a much earlier incarnation of G-Cloud, I think 2 or 3, one public sector IT buyer friend of...

When the Government announced changes to IR35 and off-payroll working rules for public sector workers like IT contractors, a wave of confusion rippled through online forums used by contractors and hirers alike. There are some great online resources that explain the changes, not least the one publish...

Office politics! Working in IT Project Management, given the profession's prominent role in the facilitation of business strategy and driving business change, you'd think we'd be above it! Project managers and leaders are among the most intelligent individuals you could hope to work with and yet man...

Originally published on CIO.com   Do you spend all your time handling internal politics and conflict? Here’s how to avoid it. My friend Steven, an IT Project Manager with that all important sense of humour, told me this week that he was considering adding to the job description on his business card....

Reading The Project Management Institute’s (PMI) 2017 Pulse of the Profession report something jumped out and really grabbed my attention. It's something that should be celebrated. As a profession, the Project Management industry is less wasteful. Specifically, more projects are achieving original g...