My view of other projects happening around the world.
The UK Government’s Public Accounts Committee has put together a report called ‘Delivering successful IT-enabled business change,‘ about how government projects are performing. The report concludes that some projects actually turn out pretty well, but those learnings are not carried across to other projects run by other departments. This won’t come as a surprise to…
I’ve been tracking down examples for project failure, mainly in the UK, and Tom “Bald Dog” Varjan contacted me with some reasons why he thinks projects are unsuccessful. His points are really interesting, so I thought I’d share them with you. Tom’s business cards introduce him as “Bald Dog, Organisational Provocateur,” so I’m sure that…
I’m glad I’m not the project manager tasked with trying to make sense out of the US Transport Security project. Can you imagine? All those different US Government agencies pitching in with their ideas. One of the case studies for my book was about the difficulties two US Government departments had trying to agree how…
The main problem, in my opinion, with post-implementation reviews is the difficulty with sharing the results with other people: making sure others don’t make the same mistakes you did and benefit from reusing things that went really well. What’s a post-implementation review? A meeting to evaluate the project’s successes and challenges and record any learnings…
This week, in between watching the complete DVD box set of Series 1 of Un Paso Adelante, the Spanish version of Fame (what is Diana’s problem?), and trying too many perfumes in Sephora, I read an interesting report about the management of US government projects. The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required…
My phone rings at work. “Hello? I’m calling about the leak.” “What leak? What’s happened?” “The leak from upstairs.” Oh. My pulse goes back to normal. Small leak, small insurance claim, opportunity to meet my upstairs neighbour in a situation where he wasn’t telling me I couldn’t install a smoke alarm because it was against…
You might remember I have written before about the Gypsy Moth IV project. It was a project to restore Sir Francis Chichester’s yacht and sail it around the world. Unfortunately, the objectives of the project have now changed considerably. Gypsy Moth IV ran aground and now the objective is to salavage something good from the…
The web revamp project started at the beginning of June, and is being delivered in a relatively short period of time. “The site architecture and wireframe design are completed,” Seifer says. “The back end administration modules and front-end design are nearly complete. The site is on a development server, and will be launched within the next 30 days, along with the topic blogs.”
When Sophie Hopkins, 24, took on the role of project manager for the Fordhall Community Land Initiative, I have to hope she knew what she was letting herself in for. After working for months without a salary, she now gets paid from an EU grant but her days often don’t finish until long into the…
The restoration effort has been a significant project: 28 weeks, 9000 hours. Not bad for a boat bought for £1 and a gin and tonic