If you lead, manage or work with teams, you know that teams have their highs and lows, just like individuals. Energy is a quality of the interactions going on in the room the team is working in, a quality that you feel when you’re in the room with them. The energy of a team is […]
Is your software stable or static?
July 10, 2012
In most professions, it’s good to have stability in the things you work with. With software, stability is good, but often we confuse static with stable. They are not the same. Static software decays and becomes useless.
What generates energy for your team?
June 25, 2012
How do you evaluate how well a team is functioning? A key indicator is energy. Energy is a quality of the interactions going on in the room the team is working in, a quality that you feel when you’re in the room with them. There are a variety of types of energy. A team may […]
Why is software maintenance so expensive?
June 12, 2012
When we purchase a piece of software – even as a service – we tend to think that the major expense is finished with the purchase price. But it’s not true. Whether you buy, build your own, or rent software, it always costs more in ongoing expenses than the initial price. Why? Developing software is […]
Why is it so hard to get good software?
May 29, 2012
Once we get over our wonder at the broad capabilities of software running on modern computers and devices, we begin to ask why so much of the software we use is of questionable quality. Between vulnerabilities to malware and constant updates to correct problems, it seems that software is never stable and reliable. Why?
Why don’t IT people understand our business?
May 16, 2012
Executives seem to agree that IT people – technicians and their leaders – do not understand the business very well. This causes all sorts of trouble when making financial decisions on major IT projects. Why don’t IT people “get” the business?
Maybe there’s something you can do about this.
Risk Management in IT
April 25, 2012
Risk management is a key area for financial leaders. When we look at IT development projects, we’re usually focused on opportunities rather than risks. But IT investments have risks beyond security and privacy issues. Project failure can lead to losses even beyond the intended investment. Here are seven ways to look at IT development projects from a risk management point of view.
It’s actually easier to do the right thing
March 26, 2012
The right thing is to plan, organize and execute with long-term results in mind. But nearly every manager is so driven by short-term metrics that they fail to account for longer-term effects of their decisions and actions. As a result, they accomplish less for themselves and for their organizations, making them less effective and less […]
Success always looks easy
March 13, 2012
With all the news about IT projects that go bad, you would think that we’d hear more news about projects that go well. Then we could just copy down the “best practices” that led to the success and – voilà – our projects would come out perfectly every time. But life is not so simple. […]
Stranger ways to fail
February 29, 2012
In the last article, I gave three reasons for IT project failure. These are not the only ways to fail! In this article I describe failure modes I’ve seen that are much less conventional – and harder to overcome without serious dedication at the top. Here are the three reasons from last time: They’re not […]