The 11th of June edition of the Economist carried an article entitled ‘Project management – Overdue and over budget, over and over again’ which bemoaned the tendency for projects to overrun in terms of cost and delivery date. The article cited research by the Standish Group suggesting that in 2004 Continue Reading
A stitch in time…
We have a couple of clients going live with systems at the moment, and we’ve been spending a lot of time working on an area that is frequently overlooked – defining the way the system will be used, and training and hold-holding the users so that these processes are quickly Continue Reading
Truncating the Fuzzy Front End
The bank holiday weekend gave me opportunity to read Steve McConnell’s book ‘Rapid Development’. One area that caught my attention was the phase of a development project which he describes as the Fuzzy Front End. In essence, if you consider the life of a project as extending from a glimmer Continue Reading
Swimming naked?
Buried at the tail of my seemingly off-message post about Greg Lemond’s last gasp victory in the 1989 Tour de France, was an assertion that businesses generally, and SME’s in particular, are failing to make effective use of technology as a means of providing competitive advantage. You may or may Continue Reading
In sickness and in health…
One of the areas I touched on last week, was the tendency for organisations purchasing CRM technology, to focus on functionality rather than implementation credentials. We have a couple of projects at the moment where we’ve helped the client finalise their business and functional requirements, and are now assisting them Continue Reading
To create a firestorm…
If you want to create a firestorm, just post on one of the CRM forums indicating you are looking to purchase a CRM package and ask if anyone have any recommendations. Within minutes you’ll have a few dozen posts extolling the virtues of various packages, some mainstream, and others previously Continue Reading
Paris – July 1989
One of the greatest moments in sport that I’ve ever witnessed, was the final stage of the 1989 Tour de France, when the American Greg Lemond snatched victory from Frenchman Laurent Fignon, by the tour’s narrowest ever margin, a mere eight seconds. It was an astounding achievement in many respects. Continue Reading
A bridge too far?
Shoe-horned in between engagements, we finally got one Mareeba task completed this week, the selection and publication of a new bridge for the header of the web site. The design agency we used for the original site came up with a beautiful image of the sun setting behind the Sydney Continue Reading
Be afraid, be very afraid…
‘It’s not in the standard product…..but it would only take a couple of days of customisation to add it’. Sit in on enough vendor presentations and it’s a phrase that you are likely to hear often repeated. My tip – if you hear these words, be afraid, be very afraid. Continue Reading
CRM application developers are from Venus. CRM end users are from Mars.
One of our projects provided a good example this week of the gap between the worlds of application development and application usage. We’ve been helping a client re-implement an existing CRM system in a way that better supports their business. One of the key requirements was to improve their lead Continue Reading