Leadership

IT-led business change programmes and projects continue to fail, yet many of the common pitfalls could easily be avoided by undertaking a ‘health check’ regularly and acting early on the intelligence it provides. Peter Osborne, managing director at LOC Consulting examines the early warning signs a health check can reveal and how organisations should respond […]

This is the third of a 3-part article – you can read the first 2 parts via the links below: PART 1: Living Projects PART 2: Living Projects – Complex Adaptive and Living Systems   It is not possible to “control” lively self-organizing processes.  It is possible to enhance Kauffman’s conditions and intentionally create a

Good project management is fundamental to the success of any project. Without it, a project can fall behind quickly and end up significantly overbudget. Businesses have often been destroyed by just one poorly managed project. The person in charge of managing a project needs to be very qualified and smart. He or she must also

This is the second of a 3-part article – you can read the first part here. Complex adaptive systems theory has been developing for more than 30 years and is beginning to inform most of the literature on organizations and change.  Since the work of Ludwig von Bertalanfy in the 1960’s to describe a “general

Successful projects are a critical part of our work environment, and we have learned much in recent years about establishing clear objectives and managing deliverables, quality, costs and schedules.  Linear planning has given us some useful approaches but we are now faced with more difficult challenges as both the complexity of the outcomes and the

It is always important to focus on the needs of a client but it is just as important for a project manager to retain control of the budget and schedule. A good change management plan can help to balance these, sometimes conflicting, aims. Projects that focus on the needs of the customer generally have more

In order to improve both productivity and work/life balance the management strategy ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) was devised. But does it work in a complex project environment? The fundamental basis of the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) approach is that employees are rewarded for the results they achieve rather than the hours worked. Employees