New Poll — Corner Cutting in Project Management

Inspired by a post on Sharp End Training’s blog (here), my post (here), and a comment by PM Hut…
FYI, moved to right sidebar

Training and qualifying sponsors

For those who need to educate their sponsors, the approach of the UK’s Home Office might at least inspire your next efforts (here, the syllabus is here).  The content looks very meaty.
This approach may only work in the public sector — I’m not sure how many senior folks in my organization would sit still for [...]

Making sure that your deliverables’ benefits are realized

With all my recent scope management posts lately, here’s a timely post on benefits realization (here) at John Gough’s iJourneys blog (here).  I like the theme of his post, that “…benefit realisation does not start when the project ends.”   I also second his point that IT sees itself as apart from the “business” and [...]

Enterprise SW value, complexity, and R&D

Dennis Howlett’s extended response (here) to Vinnie Mirchandani’s post demanding more simplicity — or begging Steve Jobs to find it — in enterprise apps (here).  Dennis effectively boils down Vinnie’s argument to this:
Why is it that despite all the interest in SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 that the industry offers so very little apparent bang per [...]

Leadership Failure in Complex Initiatives

Extending a recent theme — leading and learning in complex initiatives — I’ve just started looking at a book on The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations.  Many of the conclusions and insight reflect some earlier posts (collected here).  This post may contain my personal record for categories/tags, I guess the [...]

Measuring Innovation — Boston Consulting Group Survey

Well, since I took a potshot at BCG in an earlier post (here), I should give them kudos where appropriate.  I had a chance to chat with Harold Sirkin last year when BCG did some work for us (his book on innovation models with James Andrew is (here). 
Measuring innovation is a very knotty topic, so it [...]

SAP R&D Spend, Frugality, & Innovation

I don’t have the stats handy, but SAP has sunk a lot into R&D over the last five years.  I think we’re up to about 20 percent of revenue (2 billion EUR +) from about 15 percent in the early 2000s.
This sustained investment makes some of the recent headlines decrying reduced innovation a bit ludicrous, frankly.  [...]

Every project becoming a program?

As suggested by “The Experience Trap” series I’ve been running, in the very near future, the skills and competencies to lead future initiatives will be those of a program and portfolio manager. 
I’m not sure that the way we approach methodology is helping.  As an example, my local PMI chapter is sponsoring a speaker on Adaptive [...]

Staying in, Winning, and Changing the Game

Lot of travel lately — Walldorf, Singapore, and Bangalore back-to-back-to-back. 
I want to pick up a thread I dropped earlier, the idea that CIOs get too caught up in this idea that they have to be “strategic.”  For too many IT shops, this approach leads to several common mistakes:

Losing focus on the plumbing, thereby losing credibility [...]

CIOs, CxOs, and strategy

Frank M. at PM Think had a brief post on diverging business<>IT views of the role of IT.   This reminded me of many discussions with CIOs and our SAP strategy guys about overcoming this disconnect.
My take is that this issue has been driven by a basic conflict: CIOs see themselves as strategic when many of the businesses [...]