The railroader is the kind of person that will use his personality and blind determination to force his ideas through, regardless of other popular, or learned opinion.You'll easily be able to classify a Railroader when you encounter one, they typically talk over other people, usually starting when the have a grasp of an idea and think they can run with it. At this point, they genuinely think they know better than everyone else in the room, including the person who was talking.You can try to g... Read Full Story

To offshore or not to offshore: that is the question.If you've worked any length of time in IT and/or worked for any of the larger companies, the subject of offshore will have undoubtedly come up. The bean-counters love the idea of offshore. Usually with the disheartening cry, "It's so cheap. The rates are less than half that of our guys. We can't lose." Well, let us tell you here, loud and clear, yes you can. Big time.We at the A-Z are not Xenophobic, far from it, we like to think of ourselv... Read Full Story

Not everyone can be a star, and there are many people who do just fine not being a star. They don't crave the limelight, they don't particularly want the attention, they just do a good, solid job and are happy that you thank them for doing just that.These kind of people are essentially your grunts, the engine-house of your team. These are the guys that deliver stuff for you, day-in, day-out. You need them on your team.If you have a team full of experts and stars; let's call them Prima-Donnas,... Read Full Story

"Surely" is a word that should not be in the vocabulary of the vigilant Project Manager. Uttering phrases like, "Surely the customer knew we would..." or, "Surely the software is able to..." or even, "Surely they don't expect...", means you have made assumptions.When you make assumptions you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of problems down the line that will, of course, materialise at the worst possible time.Assumptions are a bad thing and are best left to the amateurs. Since you're a ... Read Full Story

Here's a game. You'll like this. Listen carefully.In any organisation there are essentially two groups of people. People who know stuff. People who don't really know all that much.In many, many cases the people who don't know stuff try to find stuff out by getting the people who know stuff to fill in forms or spreadsheets. It makes them feel useful. It makes it look like they are doing work. But in the end, they still don't know much stuff and they've just wasted a lot... Read Full Story

Management By Walking About (MBWA) is a much underrated mechanism to keep an eye on what is going on in your project.As things have evolved technically over the years is becomes all too easy to orchestrate, or attempt to orchestrate, your project form the comfort of your adjustable office-chair. Using eMail, Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, etc. to deliver your guidance and expert opinion.However, while you may like to think you are some kind of techno-mastermind of all you survey, the cha... Read Full Story

We've all seen them, the guys that work all hours, they are always first in and last to leave, they seem to always be in the thick of it, people are always waiting for them to do something before they can move on, they're always on-call, if they're not still on-shift.There's no doubt that out there there are some of these types, and they will be genuinely good, valuable people who do some really good stuff. Yay them, keep it up guys. You're keeping it all hanging together,... Read Full Story

At the beginning of your project, when nothing's really happened and you have a vast pot of cash to spend, you can be excused for thinking that you've fallen into something Samuel Tayor Coleridge novel depiction of the opulence of Xanadu.Just remember the money has to do you for the duration of the project, not just to buy toys for the project geeks to play with.Also, this is a time to watch out for other projects, which are starting to feel cash-strapped, coming to you and asking you... Read Full Story

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of tools, templates, strategies, techniques, approaches and methodologies out there. There are lots of really good ones, in fact most of them probably are, or at least were great at what they were developed to do at the time they were developed to do it.So, it can be a difficult time for you deciding what to use on your project.Some things will be a given, taken for granted, others will need to be sourced and decided upon. You can seek opinion from your tea... Read Full Story

A firm favourite, the Yellow Stickies tend to get pulled out at workshops as a way of capturing opinion from the assembled workshopees. While workshops, if they are run properly, are a good thing, the widespread use of the yelow sticky as a means for "getting all the issues out in the open" or "having a stab prioritising the workload" is often badly over/mis-used by people that don't know how to run a workshop properly. How many times have you seen the "facilita... Read Full Story