…that a hard hat, clipboard and loudhailer are also useful on the building sites of IT projects Any project manager will tell you; running projects is tough. You never feel on top of your plan (if it still reflects reality), you are always chasing people to do things and your end goal changes every day. This is …
What a project manager can learn from a construction foreman Read More »
If you manage IT teams, you’ll get better results with the latter; here’s why. All roles in IT are knowledge workers, they don’t count widgets on a conveyor belt, and they know more about their job than you do. The programmer is the most extreme example of this and counting their hours will dramatically reverse productivity. I’ve …
Are you a clock-watching boss or an output-driven leader? Read More »
Hoping for a career (or career change) in IT? Consider these perspectives for the major types of work you would be doing. A programmer is the most well known IT job and could be considered the civil engineer of the profession. They write lines of code (build stuff) that generates logic and typically develop specialist …
Help people in your teams avoid dropping the proverbial glass ball (family); you will gain their loyalty and achieve sustainable high performance. The IT industry is renowned for long hours, deadlines and high stress; when I was in consulting we used to plan family holidays around project milestones. Balancing such demands with the needs of …
Don't let them drop the glass ball; Leadership and work/life balance Read More »
How do you find and recruit top technical skills? If you have sufficient vacancies, hire or retain someone who has a track record of sourcing IT talent and give them everything they need to do it even better. The people you really want are unlikely to have their CVs in the market so you need to find them …
Get the best out of your technology team with these effective principles Everything depends on meaningful conversations throughout the period of evaluation (such 1:1s are part of effective team communication, learn more here). Start on a good note when you agree a performance contract up front; it will be far more significant to the person being evaluated. Active, on the …
Managing IT performance; more practice, less theory Read More »
T-40, 39, 38 isn’t just for NASA, use it on your projects and get to 3, 2, 1… success! I can still remember the go-live date: 17th June 2006. The project was a large ERP implementation across HR, Finance, Procurement and Property, our team was 100+ business and IT people delivering to 3000 users spread across numerous …
I recently joined my sales colleagues on some client visits – here’s why I plan to do this a lot more. If you are building software for the external customers of your company then you shouldn’t only rely on secondary feedback from the people who visit them. IT teams supporting internal systems have easy access to their customers – they …
IT should spend more time on the road with sales Read More »
…begins with one step,” and you must lead teams so they are willing to take it. This famous Chinese proverb (Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu) is a powerful antidote to the analysis paralysis mindset that strangles many large projects. Actually doing something rather than meeting and talking about it often seems like a novel idea …
Regularly demonstrate working software to customers; it builds engagement and increases trust. Nothing beats a good test drive before buying a new car; it’s difficult to get excited about the leather seats or the smooth gear change by reading the manual. Likewise software needs a tactile experience by the customer who is paying for it; …
