From the monthly archives:

October 2007

Changing the perception of ‘failed’ projects

October 29, 2007
This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Failing projects

I have written before about the fact that some projects are stopped for good reasons. Businesses need to be very transparent when that happens to ensure all relevant parties understand why and, crucially, agree that it is the right thing to do. Communication within the organisation needs to be carefully managed so that [...]

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Eight random facts about me

October 25, 2007

Back at the beginning of August I was tagged for this meme by Mike Ramm, over at Stop and Think! I have no idea where it started, but the rules for the 8 Random Facts About Me meme are:

Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves which others do not know about them.
People [...]

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Project governance for Parliament

October 22, 2007
This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Failing projects

The construction of the new Scottish Parliament building is a good example of how things can go so wrong on a project.
The innovative design was in its early stages when the procurement process started. Architects were bidding to deliver something within a specification of 20,740 m² and £50m. At this point, there were [...]

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Why do projects fail?

October 15, 2007
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Failing projects

There must be a good reason why all these projects fail.  There is; in fact, there are many factors that contribute to project failure.  The UK Office of Government Commerce did a study that shows the main reasons that projects fail are:

lack of clear executive leadership (the ‘missing’ Sponsor)
poor processes for identifying and managing risks [...]

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From the internet cafe

October 7, 2007

I’m moving again.  Since leaving Paris in May I’ve been waiting for my permanent home to be available for me to move into.  It’s great to finally have somewhere to call my own, but it’s been a project in its own right to get everything sorted.
So please bear with me for a while, until I [...]

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Success criteria: how do you define success?

October 1, 2007
This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Failing projects

Success criteria are the standards by which the project will be judged to have been successful in the eyes of the stakeholders. It is these that must be tracked to be able to answer the question of whether your project has delivered any benefits.
There are 2 types of success criteria:

Project: things related to [...]

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