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Back From Red Blog
Todd C. Williams
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Project failure is prevalent in IT and High-Tech Projects. Todd's Back From RedTM blog addresses the reasons for project failure and methods to avert and correct the problems that cause the failure.

Todd blogs weekly. Track the blog via RSS feeds or through our tweets.



Project Heroes

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Project Heroes

Every project has its heroes. I am not talking about the pompous grandstanders selfishly getting their fingers into every process in order to gain fame. I am talking about the people that really get the work done. Toiling tirelessly to complete their tasks and move the project forward. Below is a profile of seven of them. I have chosen them because they represent agility, communication, responsiveness, and cooperation. These are the traits discussed in my last article.

 

CIOs Are Fired For Not Providing Business Value

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CIOs Are Fired For Not Providing Business Value

CIOs have two major responsibilities—keeping IT's lights on (backups, networks, email, etc.) and providing support for business initiatives. Being mediocre at either will make for a short career. Although the respective budgets are normally a 70:30 split, a CIO will be fired in a minute for failing to properly support the 30%. That portion of their budget actually generates the company money. Keeping the lights on is a thankless job. People simply expect networks run, data served, and viruses inoculated. It is expected much as we expect water when turning on the tap. Supporting business initiatives is just as thankless since 60% of projects seem to always be in trouble.

 

Resuscitating the Knuckle Draggers

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Resuscitating the Knuckle Draggers

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Walking onto red projects, anyone can see and feel the problems. The bedraggled team wears the pain with their long faces and the slumped shoulders. Knuckle draggers. They are carrying the weight of the world, or at least the project, on their shoulders. How can any project succeed with these demoralized, denigrated, and defeated folks? Their spirits are far from lifted with new project manager's enthusiastic optimism. It only irritates a team wallowing in their misery. Nothing is worse than a chipper cheerleader when you are absorbed in troubles. It is an ugly situation.

 

Your Company Is Too Old

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Your Company Is Too Old

As most of you know, I am a total convert. Social media is, simply put, cool. I am a Twitter and LinkedIn bigot and may soon be flourishing in Facebook. Last week a long time friend got back in touch with me all because of social media. Hold on, don't stop reading! This is a business blog, not a story about some high school friends getting together and tweeting about eating bagels or sushi. This is about the business power of social media.

My friend works for a multibillion-dollar company and he is frustrated with "these kids" making stupid non-business decisions. Worse yet, they shy away from the company he works for because his company is "too old." I told Claude (pardon for no link, he lacking a Twitter account. Surprised?), "Well you are old. Your fifty-three I am only fifty-two!" There was silence.

 

Fire the Bastards... and Other Conflict Resolution Techniques

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Fire the Bastards

Conflict resolution is a major part of recovering red projects. The solutions range from firing the bastards to analyzing where the sources of conflicts are and determining a more friendly way to resolve them. I have to admit, when stepping into a project where the estimate at completion is a couple million dollars over the budget, everyone is pointing fingers, and the customer is screaming the supplier is in default, replacing people is sometimes the best option. So much so, my kids occasionally refer to me as 'hatch.'

 
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Project Failure Insight:

The following blogs regularly have articles on project failure, recovery and good management practices.
Chris Curran
CIO Dashboard
Michiko Diby
Preventing Project Failure
John Estrella
Dr. John A. Estrella's Blog
Mike Krigsman
IT Project Failures on ZDNet
John F. Moore
Random Thoughts of a Boston-based CTO
Roger Sessions
Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises

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