Programme Management | Peter Alkema

Strategic Portfolio Management – Air Traffic Controllers of the corporate skies

2 Comments / Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

They are the unsung heroes of every airport and commercial flight; the calm quiet voice in the pilot’s ears talking him through landing and take-off. The air traffic controller (ATC) is one of the most stressful jobs in the world, responsible for the safety of hundreds of thousands of air passengers daily. Heathrow control tower …

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Cumbersome is the opposite of Agile; here's why

Leave a Comment / Agile, IT, Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

It’s good to be pro-Agile but it’s also important to be anti-Cumbersome You know them when you see them; unwieldy and inefficient projects that take ages to deliver and no-one really knows how to start untangling and fixing them. Many projects have to be large and complex simply because of their scope – but they can still be …

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What a project manager can learn from a construction foreman

Leave a Comment / IT, Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

…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 …

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The (Lost) Art of Taking People With You

Leave a Comment / Coaching, General, Leadership, Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together – but how? In two days, the world’s oldest and largest annual ultra marathon takes place in South Africa; the Comrades. The vast majority of participants tell you far more about their experiences with others along the way than …

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Milestone countdowns actually work; here's why

Leave a Comment / Change, IT, Leadership, Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

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 …

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Deliverable reviews; The X-Factor of Programme Management

Leave a Comment / IT, Leadership, Programme Management / By Peter Alkema

Drive design quality by having team members present their work. It’s initially a bit uncomfortable but once it becomes like a heartbeat in your programme you will wonder how you ever achieved real design quality without it. During a large scale design phase of a waterfall programme it can get very difficult to track all …

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