Culture

Extremes in Risk Tolerance

Posted on 28. Jan, 2010
Categories: Consulting, Culture, IT Project Failures, Project Management

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I have been giving quite a bit of thought lately to the topic of enterprise risk management. In large part, this stems from the fact that I recently completed a project in which my client’s risk tolerance was off the charts. I mean crazy. In this post, I discuss three types of organizations with respect to risk tolerance.

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Mark McGwire, Project Management, and Coming Clean

Posted on 13. Jan, 2010
Categories: Consulting, Culture, IT Projects, Project Management

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Why don’t people just fess up when caught? I like to think that we live in a forgiving society. While coming clean is laudable, it’s hard for me to get over apologies laden with disclaimers and excuses. I understand the need to save face, but providing excuses only rubs salt in the wound and minimizes any benefit of the doubt that others will grant you.

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Can Consultants Lead? Three Viewpoints

Posted on 04. Dec, 2009
Categories: Consulting, Culture, Project Management

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I’ve been thinking (perhaps struggling) quite a bit about leadership as I finish a, er, challenging project. Can consultants actually lead on IT projects or is this reserved for management?

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Google and Failure-Tolerant Cultures

Posted on 08. Sep, 2009
Categories: Culture, IT Project Failures

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If adopted, methodologies like Agile software development should decrease failure rates. Of course, people will ultimately determine whether these projects fail much more than any methodology or technology.