Blog

US businessman Robert Half said, "It's easy to make good decisions when there are no bad options." I often think of this quote when embarking upon engagement of vendors for an IT project or consulting on IT service delivery. It can feel like that and anyone who has ever made a bad IT decision will i...

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Herbert A. Simon Given that it's called Information Technology, is it surprising that many organisations are unknowingly compromising their strategic business and IT Project effectiveness through information overload? Actually, given the amou...

As you climb the IT Project Management career ladder you may find that your experience and seniority brings you benefits that you didn't enjoy back at the start ... Rank has its privileges after all. However, could it also have its problems? In my experience, there are numerous instances where a sen...

The benefits of incorporating risk management into the DNA of your IT Projects are huge. However, I have been asked to consult on a number of IT projects where inadequate risk evaluation has led to delays, extra costs and even potential project failure. Sadly, it isn’t just my anecdotal experiences....

62% of CIOs are finding it difficult to recruit talent to drive transformation. So writes Access Talent's Adam Morrell. Given that IT now is increasingly about adding business value through transformation you could be depriving your organisation of potential growth and efficiencies if you find yours...

Politics in Project Management is unavoidable. How you deal with project politics though could be the difference between success and failure. Every office has politics but for project managers, it's often more intense as teams regularly come together for the life-cycle of the specific project and th...

NOW is the time to make sure your IT Service Delivery is functioning at its best. Why now? According to Gartner's forecast, the worldwide IT services market will grow to nearly $914 billion this year and considering that outsourcing will contribute over half of market growth, Gartner expects the mar...

I bet you can ride a bicycle now, am I right? How many times did you fall off whilst learning? How many plasters got applied to scuffed knees, how many times did you nearly go over the handlebars because you applied the front brake too harshly? How many tears? How many tantrums? None of these were c...

I recently had the pleasure of working with two IT Project Teams who are paradoxically both very similar and very different. The first, I'll call them 'Team X' was struggling to deliver projects within agreed parameters and the second, 'Team Y' was hitting targets but was asking 'what else can we do...

The other day I was out shopping for a handbag, yes that’s right a handbag, on this occasion for my wife. It was a sunny day, the football was on telly, the barbeque and beer in the fridge were calling me but I was shopping for handbags. I REALLY love my wife. Now I must confess, I am not much of an...

Following my last post  in CIO.com, I had a lot of feedback about creating bespoke hybrid Project Management methodologies like the one, I invented that I called LAWS (a blend of Lean, Agile, Waterfall and Six Sigma).  Also, after I balked at the acronym that would come from an Agile/Six Sigma hybri...

Digital technology has already changed the business service delivery landscape. The thing that we call IT is evolving, you’ve probably felt it in your business. When school kids look back in history class at the era we’re about to navigate, they will reflect upon it on a par with the industrial revo...

Now in its 36th year, The Society for Information Management's (SIM) IT Trends Study has taken the pulse of the IT industry and identified 10 key concerns for CIOs in the year ahead. I think there are five things YOU can do NOW to address them all. First, though, why take notice? Well firstly, SIM's...

I heard this weather forecast today on the radio - "Cloud ... leading to sunshine." If only it were always the case with IT. It feels like everyone and everything is in the cloud these days. Data is stored in the cloud, applications are hosted in the cloud, services are accessed directly from the cl...

There's a really interesting article by Stephanie Overby at cio.com about organisations experimenting with new DevOps application delivery methods, but using in-house delivery talent because they’re not yet convinced that their IT service providers are up to the job. I believe that this is the bigge...