Who owns a project?   “You pay for it, it’s yours.” I am sure I am quoting (or misquoting) someone here, but you get the idea. For an IT project of any size or worth, someone senior enough to be an effective sponsor is usually desired, along with the budget to ‘pay’ for it. I put ‘pay’ in quotes because all the dollars spent on a projec...

I am now lucky enough to be working at a consulting company with a great group of experienced people, and we do share some great "war stories", and it made me think that I do have my share of experiences that, if written down, some small number of people may find interesting.  Seems to me a blog is great for that. I would call this memories r...

Thirteen is all you need, at least in this point in time. I may add to them as time goes by, but I would also like to hear from readers if they have any suggestions or thoughts or their very own principles for IT Projects success. Pleae offer them and maybe we can get them into the second edition of the book...which you all remember is available at...

13. Given many medium to small software Deliverables, use Architecture to manage and integrate the Deliverables into a complete system. This is a more specific statement of Principle #3; in Cascade, an Information System Architecture is used to integrate the two week deliverables, until a complete deliverable (component, sub-system) is assemble...

12. Within the three month phase, parcel work into two-week periods; analyze for 2 weeks, then design and develop for 2 weeks (two developers), and then test for 2 weeks. When the first 2 weeks of analysis is done, start the next two weeks of analysis in parallel to the design/development; carry on in cascading 2 week periods until the entire proje...

#11.   Partition large projects into 3 month phases, that is the longest period you can plan for without the chance of significant change to priorities, resourcing, etc. I was lucky to learn this early in the 90's as Project Management was getting a higher profile, accompanied by the increased use of Microsoft Project. Other PM tools wer...

#10. Models are better than text. I would like to think that by this point in time, this principle no longer requires justification. It has been at least a few years since I last saw a dense “SRD” or “SDD” document (SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT, SYSTEM DESIGN DOCUMENT).  I must offer my respect to the many talented people who labored to produ...

#9. Leave a record of what you have done, so the project will not miss you if you leave. If change is the only constant, then resources on a project will change. The risk in such change is that a person’s contribution to a project will be lost, and that the new person assigned to the project will have to start over. This is a particular risk in...

#8 -->   It’s the Deliverable (that matters), not the Task. The final deliverable is the Information System ready to be used effectively by the Business. If you can jump from ‘Start’ to this final deliverable in one “Task”, then power to you. Some people can do this; most cannot. This is again where a team of specialists is most effec...

#7 One Architect/Analyst can generate enough work for two Developers and one Tester, structure your project teams in this ratio. This is actually one of those “rules of thumb” that have been borne out over time. (The ratio may vary a bit from case to case, like when the experience levels are different across the roles.) This ratio combines with...