On Friday, 21 October 2016, many internet users could not reach marquee internet destinations like Amazon Web Services, Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Slack, PayPal, and many others. Why not? Dyn, a large Domain Name Service (DNS) provider, was under attack.
At roughly 7:00am North American...
more...Years ago I was involved in trying to figure out how to use an in-house system to replace two cobbled-together commercial products. I know, I know, everyone thinks it's supposed to go the other way, but in this case, the in-house-developed system was far superior. It was already serving a...
more...Over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of technical due diligence exercises. They’ve ranged from assessing an organisation’s information technology where the primary product or service was not technology related, all the way to examining companies where the main product or service was...
more...Years ago, very shortly after I’d taken over management of a new team, there was to be a demonstration of a new set of features that my team had developed. The demonstration was for the heads of the business areas that would be using those new features. The...
more...Years ago we had to implement some business functionality into a large trading and settlement system that was for tax reporting and withholding. I met with the leader of the release team and his head designer for this new feature to review the design, as I...
more...What is ‘project change’? It’s anything that deviates from the plan. We often consider change to be only a change in requirements, and indeed that is a change. But there are far more sources of change than that. For example, one of your team members is suddenly...
more...Years ago I got a call from our CIO about a project to automate budgeting for our U.S. division. The company made consumer packaged goods, and so the budget was built up from below the SKU level, as different packaging, ingredients, and many other variables had to be taken...
more...I came across the expression “hustle provides the cushion” many years ago, and it resonated incredibly with me. It is the antithesis of procrastination, and is I believe a key factor in successful projects.
While I don’t believe in starting a project...
more...Failing to plan is planning to fail. And failing to use the plan after it is developed is just as bad as no planning at all. It never fails to surprise me when I see a project manager move into a ‘fly by the seat of their pants’ approach part way through...
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