Project Police

The project police use portfolio visibility to control the funding lever at the VA, if project performance degrades. ...

... "The new evaluation system temporarily stops projects that miss incremental, 6-month milestones to determine whether to spend more money rejuvenating them or permanently end them. " ...

Via Next Gov: VA IT Projects

Project Visibility

Federal CIO makes progress with government IT strategy, enabling data and project visibility through dashboards. ...

... "And the recently launched federal IT Dashboard--a display of IT project status that corporations would do well to mimic--has not only given the public visibility into the performance of Uncle Sam's big-ticket IT projects, but put agency CIOs on notice that execution matters. " ...

Via InformationWeek: Vivek Kundra

Outsourcing Control

Boeing takes risks with design and manufacturing outsourcing across its integrated supply chain for the 787 Dreamliner and loses control of the process. Regardless of the industry space, manufacturing or information technology, management controls are necessary on the outsourced processes - clear visibility and accountability should not be compromised. Boeing is making adjustments. ...

... "The company’s chief, W. James McNerney Jr., concedes that Boeing lost control of the process by farming out more design and production work than ever and not keeping close tabs on suppliers. He says the company is retaking control. " ...

Via New York Times: 787 Dreamliner

Forecasting Innovation

While innovation isn't quite deterministic, you can reverse engineer the size of an innovation portfolio across the various stage-gates necessary to sustain future revenue from new products. This should provide you with insight on the number of new ideas that need to be generated or the number of product trials needed. Visibility into the innovation portfolio and your historical performance is valuable information for managing business success. ...

... "Break these annual revenue targets down over a mix of products, new and existing, in each year. Some firms call this a revenue cascade or revenue waterfall. " ...

Via Innovation in Practice: Mapping Innovation

Strategic Information Projects

IBM introduces tools, models, and implementation blueprints to help its clients create and accelerate an information agenda, as illustrated in the client reference below. Visibility to business performance or creating a single view of the customer is a common problem, especially in industries where mergers and acquisitions are prevalent. This offering looks to be helpful in creating the critical path of projects, or roadmap, to achieving the desired business objective for information visibility. ...

... "Starting with a series of incremental projects, each which addressed its Information Agenda, Irish Life and Permanent moved toward a single view of all its customer information. As a result, it can now tailor products and services for clients across multiple touch points such as the Internet, call-centers and various sales channels; create more effective targeted sales campaigns; improve customer self-service; and maintain continuous records of customer transactions and service satisfaction across the business. " ...

Via IBM: Create an Information Agenda

IT Project Visibility to Wall Street Analysts

Insights on how Wall Street may view an IT project and how to address their concerns. ...

... "Red flags pop up when, for example, management offers analysts vague time lines of when the company expects to start or finish integrating systems in a merger or acquisition ... " ...

Via CIO: Wall Street

Interpreting Business Results

Tom provides interpretation of Bank of America CEO summary of quarterly results. ... Priceless. ... Read on. ...

... "We made total asses of ourselves, allowing ourselves to be conned by a bunch of out-of-touch Nobel-winning economists with their portfolio-risk smoothing models ... " ...

Via Tom Peters: Vile Bile

Spot Those Business Opportunities

Project Visibility

UK IT projects, if not already visible, will come under more intense scrutiny. ...

... "Because it poses one of the biggest challenges to Mr Brown and his team, the management of IT projects in the public sector should be looked at first, say analysts at Butler. " ...

Via Contractor UK: UK Projects

IT Roles in Sustainability Initiatives

The I in information technology gets emphasized when sustainability is considered. ...

... "For example, IT is charged with creating databases to track environmental activity - measuring our emissions, tracking the safety and performance of our carriers, and managing our contractors. IT not only manages the information but it serves as a watchdog. " ...

Via CIO Asia: The Green Information Technology Role

Project Visibility and Transparency

Don't let doomed projects proceed in secrecy. Make the truth transparent and visible. Identify an action list to deal with the issues or prepare recommendation for cancellation. ...

... "The sad part is that often the people working on these projects know that they will fail, and yet, they are afraid to voice their opinion to the people in charge. " ...

Via Tom Peters: Doomed Projects

Stay Visible and Relevant

Raise expectations, market your capabilities, and educate the organization to stay visible and relevant to your enterprise. ...

... "The limited expectations CEOs have of IT leadership threaten to stunt IT's contributions, resulting in an IT organization that may be averse to taking risks or even rising to the level of visibility. " ...

Via Computerworld: Expectations of IT