Category: Managing Change

The Project Mahout

How do you get an elephant from A to B? There are four ways: You can Push it, Pull it, Pick it up and carry it, or You can climb up onto the elephants back and whisper in its ear “There is a bun in that direction.” In change management, the subject has got to …

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Keep your plans agile and objectives personal

Your project plans need to be detailed for the near term so that everyone knows: What they are working on, What their accountability is for the deliverables and quality and How this fits into the greater objective. The only thing that is certain about a long-term detailed plan is that it will be wrong. PMs can …

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The Global Project Managers toolkit

As you venture forth on a multinational project delivery, what tools you need to increase the chances of success? As soon as you start to cross borders, the geographic and cultural separation mean that the trusted team management techniques such as “Management by walking around” and “the team that drinks together, thinks together” no longer …

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Travellers tool bag – What to take with you for the journey

As you venture forth on a multinational project delivery, Nic Evans looks at what  tools you need to increase the chances of success. As soon as you start to cross borders, the geographic and cultural separation mean that the trusted techniques such as “Management by walking around” and “the team that drinks together, thinks together” …

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Go Forth and “Multi-”ply

Going multinational opens up multiple extra dimensions in system complexity. The biggest strategic efficiency for multinational systems is gained by having front-end, administration and accounting systems that can travel in these extra dimensions Multi-Format – Culture-specific number formats (thousand and decimal separators) currency symbols (prefixes or suffixes) and date formats are essential to present users …

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Snakes And Ladders – The Benefits and Pitfalls of Pan European Finance Systems

Henry Ford is the father of modern mass production. His production lines established Ford as the first global car manufacturer. Yet it was not until 34 years after his death that Ford produced their first global car – the Ford Escort. Ford set out to use common components worldwide, but by the time the Escort …

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European Vision – Pan-European Finance Systems Delivery

For many international finance organisations there is a holy grail of a single system and standardised global processes that can deliver best practices and major efficiencies. But can a single platform meet all the diverse needs of the local businesses? Do the complexities, costs, delivery time and risk of global projects outweigh the benefits? In …

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Sorry seems to be the hardest word

I’ve been getting a lot of stick about my car. Jeremy Clarkson berates me every week calling me a “Pious Driver”. But it suddenly got a lot worse. Now it’s open season for Toyota drivers: first with the accelerator pedal problems, then with the brake problems on newer models of the Prius than mine, and now the …

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It’s time to kill big IT contracts

“I’ve met many programme directors who’ve said ‘I’m doing a £100m programme’, I say ‘I feel very sorry for you’” Phil Pavitt – the man in charge of the UK government’s largest IT outsourcing deal – believes Whitehall needs to end its love affair with supersized IT contracts. See the interview on Silicon.com : http://bit.ly/bRj2wU

I have a cunning plan..

Building your project plan is the most critical step in any project. Your plan is the basic way of measuring the progress of the project – and if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. If your project is to be successful it must start with a solid plan. Much of comedy of BlackAdders sidekick and servant …

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