The best way to plan a project is to deconstruct it. One PM has been using a handy model to clearly outline the types of work that need to be done by both IT and the business in order to activate most SaaS packages. Key an eye on these six subtleties when deploying packaged vendor solutions.
Organizations that over-emphasize expediency can set themselves up for long-term losses. This article addresses strategies for taking a balanced approach--specifically, maintaining development capacity, maintaining code asset value and flexible tool selection.
Trends on the horizon point to a renewed focus on the alignment of IT operations and strategic business goals. In addition, competition in all markets will continue to place pressure on both optimization and innovation. Savvy professionals can stay ahead of the curve by keeping the following project management trend predictions in mind.
If you are to grow as an agent of organizational change, then you have to keep learning. Sometimes the learning comes from understanding your successes, sometimes by reflecting on the failures of others. But perhaps the most long-lived learning comes from internalizing ways not to repeat personal failures. Here are one seasoned PM's top five lessons learned along his 37-year (and counting) journey through the world of project management…
Large-scale change of enterprise-level architecture and infrastructure presents a challenge, especially in today's networked world. Enter agile project management and the ideas of refactoring and continuous improvement, which involve creating innovative new solutions for each problem encountered.
Large-scale change of enterprise-level architecture and infrastructure presents a challenge, especially in today's networked world. Enter agile project management. In our concluding installment, we look at successful architecture and design from history, explore the challenges that come with the principles of evolutionary architecture and design--and identify a short list of evolutionary design principles.
Application development and delivery has changed dramatically in recent years...have you? Many areas have been well documented, but in the midst of all that there is another change happening. Who's in control? That’s what we explore here.
With the steady industry shift away from custom code applications to more commercial software packages and services, IT project management practices are necessarily changing to adapt to the new conditions. Is this a glimpse into what the future holds?
It’s a universal problem for IT project managers everywhere. When you’re managing a system implementation you are responsible for the total solution--that means application and infrastructure. The problem is that these two camps haven’t always gotten along. Here, we look at how to make bridging the gap between infrastructure and applications in your project technology stack as easy as, well...a piece of cake.
As environmental concerns and sustainability become bigger issues across all aspects of society, there is an argument for taking a rather longer-term view of product development--the concept of whole lifecycle thinking, ensuring that the costs of the product are considered from birth to retirement. What can project managers do to help develop and implement the concept?
Call it application sprawl, application bloat or whatever you like, most companies that rely on applications could use a good old-fashioned spring cleaning to reassess and determine which apps in a company’s portfolio provide unequivocal value and which should make a polite exit.
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"I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it." - Dorothy Parker |
