Leading Critical Change

Consider any programme. There are two scenarios: (1) The right programme leaders are in place – in their opinion they don’t need a lot of busy body PMO bods scrutinising their plans and picking them up on the quality and quantity of their administration …. (2) The wrong programme leaders are in place – the [...]

I have been recently looking at what online tools are available to support the planning and governance of strategy implementation. The one good thing they all recognise is that using spreadsheets or Microsoft project “can be cumbersome and overcomplicated and mask the overall picture – which is where you really need to focus”. So far [...]

Most project reporting tools only report achievements against commitments. That means until a target is missed – management know nothing (lets face it % task completion tells us nothing useful). Managing Behind! I require that commitment owners use visual plans to report every week on the status of future commitments – green (I will make [...]

Although very strong technical expertise and leadership may well be required to select and implement the right IT solutions, ultimately it is the level of commitment from the business that determines the success of any large IT change project. Business priority, clear vision, specification of requirements, choice of the right solution, leadership of organisation and [...]

A failing project – what is needed? Knowledge? Know-how? But what kind? If the real issue is a failure to coordinate the expertise already within the business then adding more may not help. Worse, it could send a “you lot don’t know what you are talking about!” message to the existing team. Some years ago [...]

It seems to be human nature to only take responsibility for those things that we can actually influence. Consider items designated as ‘dependencies or ‘interdependencies’ or ‘risks’. In many cases, because their resolution can be beyond the remit of project managers they are put on a ‘if this happens it’s not our fault as we [...]

In over twenty five years of managing projects I have never seen a manager or stakeholder EVER read a task level project plan. That is not bad thing. A task level plan is not for communication – it’s for planning. Understanding the tasks required to achieve each milestone and deliverable is a valuable exercise which [...]