From the category archives:

Hints

Career know-how from people who’ve done it

September 6, 2007

This time last week I was at a BCS young professionals group event in London, listening to Owen King, Mark Bloodworth and Marc Holmes talking about how they got to where they are in their careers. Marc’s route meandered into software architecture, Owen knew what he wanted before he even graduated and Mark moved around [...]

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Be a helicopter

July 9, 2007

In a new job, it’s hard to know what details are important and what you can let slip in one ear and out the other. So I’ve been trying to soak up everything – a strategy which has been moderately successful. I’ve picked up a lot of low-level detail and, not yet knowing if it [...]

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Making meetings work

July 2, 2007

I’ve just read Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders, and there’s a whole section on different types of meetings, what they are for and how they work. I read it and thought, ‘Everyone knows how to run a meeting, surely?’ Having said that, I’m spending a lot of time in and chairing meetings [...]

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The NITLE wiki

June 28, 2007

I’ve added something else to the list of things I’ve found to be useful on the Resources page. This is a wiki from NITLE, a non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting liberal education. NITLE run a project management workshop for liberal arts colleges, which is interesting in itself as it proves to those skeptics that project [...]

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Getting it right in government

June 20, 2007

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 [...]

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Making a good business case

June 11, 2007

I found this white paper about putting together a business case on IT Toolbox. It depends on how you interpret the term ‘business case’ but for me this document is more a feasibility study: what is the problem, what could we do about it and what have we decided to do. A ‘pure’ business case [...]

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Meeting room C

June 4, 2007

New country (well, returning to the one I left). New city. New department. New commute. My relocation went pretty well, all things considered, although Hans’ confidence in my ability to get everything to the right place was a bit optimistic. I had to buy a new hairbrush, as mine is in storage somewhere. I also [...]

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Two resources for jargon

May 31, 2007

Don’t know your ALO from your elbow? Business Balls has a long list of business (and other) acronyms to help you decode all those TLA’s. It’s not the prettiest site in the world, but functional and full of other resources too like team building games. If you’re stuck with the jargon of project management, sign [...]

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Need help estimating?

April 26, 2007

Who doesn’t?  I’m not wild about estimating myself, especially if my project Sponsor has decided that contingency is a just a fancy way of saying ‘I have no idea.’  Which is largely true.  So I was glad to come across this: Joseph Phillips has shared his estimating expertise with the world, in the form of [...]

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New features

April 14, 2007

One of the things people ask me the most is ‘Where can I find useful project management resources online?’ Obviously, this blog is a great place to start. But there are other sites offering great project management advice – you just have to sort through hundreds of Google references to consultancies, training companies or other [...]

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