The Perfect Storm

Rob Saxon is a Project Management Professional, Certified Information Systems Auditor and a trained Six Sigma Specialist. Rob is currently developing methods to integrate project management into previously unexplored areas of business.

  Applications Delivery   Business Case   Business Intelligence   Cost Management   Information Technology   Quality   Strategy   Testing/Test Management  

Atmospheric clouds are ephemeral, countless, difficult to grasp and always changing shape. Cloud computing is no different. Even before Eric Schmidt of Google pushed the term “cloud computing” into the mainstream, IT professionals have been struggling to capitalize on the idea of decoupling the business from internal technology.

Before we begin to offload our technologies onto the cloud, however, we must answer some fundamental questions. What benefits does cloud computing offer? How can project managers leverage the power of cloud computing to help teams? How can project teams use cloud technologies to help deliver great solutions?

As cloud technology stands today, there is no central service provider--and no killer technology that dominates the discipline. That said, enterprises today have the capability of capitalizing on specific aspects of the cloud to improve operations. Likewise, project managers can make use of cloud technologies to improve quality and reduce cost.

I’ve broken down some project management uses of the cloud into a STORM:

• Select technologies that are appropriate to the task.
• Tether and meter resource cost.
• Observe and report on resource usage to customers
• Respond to changing project needs with increasing or decreasing resources
• Measure, in very specific terms, how much the administration of …

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