Green out

Sustainable IT projects make your company look good - but it's probably the lower energy bills that will get them approved.

How Green Does Your IT Grow?

Green is beautiful, and it is certainly the color of IT looking into the future. There is a challenge, however, to coordinating the environmental shade of green with the financial one. Here are some thoughts and ideas for greening up your IT initiatives while holding on to the green stuff that pays the bills.

Nurturing the Next Big Thing: Innovation Requires Cutting Edge and Tradition

There is no shortage of surveys heralding the miracle of innovation for organizations trying to remain competitive in a volatile global economy. As that uncertainty becomes the norm, the focus on innovation is bound to grow. This article discusses how organizations must find a way to marry the fundamentals of project governance that helped them get where they are with the breakthrough concepts that will get them where they need to be. In doing so, it looks at how a solar energy and clean-tech company turns prototypes into business solutions by slashing time-to-market without sacrificing quality. Next, the article details how companies innovate during troubled economic times, citing a study by Wipro and Forbes Insight's Growth Strategies for 2012 and Beyond, which reports that 68 percent of global executives agree that innovation is more important now than before the recession. It then identifies areas where organizations fall short. The article discusses how organizations can make the jump from a cutting-edge concept to a full-fledged project that delivers true innovation and examines how review strategies can help companies identify innovative concepts that are not up to par. It looks at how companies can collaborate on innovative concepts by detailing how Ford Motor Company and Weyerhaeuser worked together on a project to replace fiberglass or mineral reinforcements and reveals the positive results of this collaboration. It then summarizes how an innovation governance process may help organizations find the balance between fostering creativity and demanding measurable outcomes and explains how an innovation steering committee can evaluate proofs of concept and how they align with strategic goals of the business. Accompanying the article are two case studies: The first case study examines OnStar's (Detroit, Michigan, USA) innovation strategy. The second case study discusses Petra Solar's (South Plainfield, New Jersey, USA) innovative solar technology, smart-grid and clean-tech projects.

Going for the Green: In Pursuit of Eco-Friendly IT

How green are you? For many, implementing Green IT solutions is an imperative that transcends ROI or enterprise alignment. For others, it's a good thing to go green if it is cost effective and in tune with other stakeholder expectations and needs.

Agile Sustainability: The Business Case for Lean, Agile and Green

For those project managers practicing agile practices and methods, you already have all the ingredients in place to optimize your green initiatives. This article will attempt to illustrate how agile principles can enhance and compliment projects that have sustainability as one of its main end goals.

What is Sustainability?

What are some examples of Sustainability in action?

What resources are there for incorporating Sustainability into your project?