ISO 9000 Projects – not just paperwork!

Recent events have made some organisations consider ISO9000 again as a badge to reassure their customers that they have a consistent way of doing business. It is more than a simple visit from an auditor but needs a commitment from everyone in the organisation to work in a consistent way.

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“New Google” or “Classic Google please”?

The Google search engine has changed.  Does it serve the same purpose? Does it serve the same stakeholders as the world thought it did?

Google is no longer the tool that told you where to find the history of snow plows but the top of the list are sites where you can buy them. It doesn’t compare prices but it does favour paid adverts and commercial sites. I don’t know if that was intentional (it will help Google as a business get paid more) or an interpretation of “most people now use the internet to shop” that the press would have us believe.

Scaleablity: strength or weakness?

One of my current projects is the consolidation of a diverse collections of legacy “systems” into one end-to-end integrated business system. Why are we doing it? Efficiency.  The organisation can streamline its operations and free staff to concentrate on the higher value work they never get to do at the moment (because they are doing things to join up the current systems manually.)  Scalability will be a strength for this system.

IT Project failure: can we blame the techies?

The business commentators have noticed: IT is not giving most businesses the benefits they claim IT should.   The projects themselves bring change that the businesses and their people aren’t handling properly.  IT projects lock wasteful practices into new systems. The dream and the promises have been broken.

It is so easy to throw stones at IT people.

Planning Stakeholder Communication

The main part of the communication plan is for communication with stakeholders.

Some preparatory work is needed:

• who the stakeholders are 
• what information they can give
• their areas of influence 
• their information needs

Keep your stakeholders close

Every project has stakeholders.  From them we understand the true requirements and critical success factors. If you don’t keep them close, it is very hard to make your project a success.

How close?  Close enough that they know where the project is (good or bad) and you know what they really feel about that situation.  Painfully close at times.