Blog

Originally published on CIO.com When I asked associates, acquaintances and clients (who had all recently recruited for IT roles) how many had used personality type or psychometric testing, 7 out of 10 said that they had. I recall the response from a survey by the Society for Human Resource Managemen...

After a successful Bank Holiday building flat pack furniture, I decided that I would get proactive on all the other little jobs around the house. You know the ones. The loose this, the broken that, the "in need of oiling" the other. They're the jobs that are mentally scheduled for completion "at som...

It makes sense doesn't it? Which exercise DVD are you going to buy? The one that features 50 different gruelling exercises or the one that promises you'll drop a dress size in a week? Harvard Business School professor, Theodore Levitt, once put this beautifully, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-i...

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...