Troubled Projects – How to Get Them Back on the Right Path to Success

03.08.12

Many of us as project managers have come across a situation where we have been asked to take over a project that is "in trouble".    Some of the reasons for this may include:

  • Scope is extending beyond what was originally agreed upon when the project began   
  • Project spend to date is higher than what was expected by this point in the project and there is significant concern that the project will run out of funds before implementation  
  • Project is falling behind schedule, and there is concern that the project may not meet the deployment date

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Forecast: Cloudy with Eventual Challenges

01.26.12

Understanding data sources for acquiring and integrating data is rarely a slam dunk. After all, each data source is like an employee in a company, unique coming to the table with similar content and behavior but there are underlying differences, sometimes very subtle, indicating the person is from somewhere else. My favorite example, the way the word coffee is annunciated across the US puts a little more insight on where a person may be from, says the Jersey girl.  Unlike the accents where you understand the word and carry on with meaningful communication, data sourcing nuances define the phrase, the devil is in the details. Delta’s vs. full pulls, does the file need interception for cleanup, SLAs/ OLAs, upstream sources, downstream consumers…oh my. Not to mention the sensitive task of data classification requirements, PII (Personally Identifiable Information) vs. (Non PII) that data owners and integrators need to collaborate closely on.  

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Troubled Project Management - How to Get Them Back on the Right Path to Success

10.19.11

Many of us as project managers have come across a situation where we have been asked to take over a project that is "in trouble".    Some of the reasons for this may include:

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Getting your Thoughts and Data into the Cloud

07.11.11

As if IT professionals did not have enough to think about with supporting on premise applications, the emergence of the cloud (and the hype with it) has presented a new set of challenges for software, security and infrastructure professionals.  Should our corporate application be migrated to the cloud? Not an easy question to answer especially as IT decision makers are still trying to understand what migrating to the cloud really means.  In a series of Madrona Solutions Group blog postings, we plan on exploring many of the factors facing IT professionals, but before we proceed too far, it is extremely important to first categorize the degree of data sensitivity for the data you may be targeting for migration into the cloud.  After all it’s all about the data!

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A Critical Framework to Turn Goals into Results

06.29.11

Without clarity into how your company operates, it is easy to make uninformed decisions, which materialize in costly projects that deploy poor solutions that produce little benefit. 

This is the first in a series of blogs that explores a critical framework used to avoid producing meaningless solutions, and help turn company goals into meaningful results. 

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