I joined in with Managing and Saving Programs in a Changing World, an audio/Webex conference with LeRoy Ward, Executive VP at ESI, recently. It wasn’t radical – the ESI approach to managing programs in a changing world is obviously to be great at the basics – but it was a good revision session and a…
You love your laptop, right? It goes where you go and it’s oh so handy for meetings. Well, personally I’m a pen and paper girl but if it’s really important and will make things easier I will tote around my laptop and use it in meetings. Not using it for every meeting makes me acutely…
“This lecture pays due tribute to a lot of our computing heritage,” says Alan Pollard, BCS President in full regalia with a presidential medal around his neck. I take my seat in the conference room of The Wellcome Trust. It’s a beautiful space. One of the best things about attending events is getting to nose…
Today I want to look at the Pareto principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. As an Office Goddess, you make everything you do look effortless, although afterwards you can explain just how complex it was. No whinging while doing the task, mind. There’s no real secret to getting everything done – it’s just a…
You would have thought that with the research on pay gaps and the Exemplar Employer report we would be past discussing whether women get a fair deal at work and would have moved on to what people are actually going to do about it. BCS, e-skills UK and Intellect, in association with the Department for…
I’ve just come back from Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, a place I’ve wanted to visit for ever because it’s where they build the magnificent Ice Hotel every year. It was on the list of things to do before I hit 30, but I didn’t make it. It struck me as a coincidence that just as I…
On my mission to turn you all into Office Goddesses, I spoke to Heather White, CEO of The Magic of Networking Ltd, a coaching, training and consultancy firm packed with experts in corporate and career networking. Networking is often something women find especially hard to do. I mean, what’s the point? It’s all chewing the…
This is part two of my interview with Sophie Kain, director of Prior Kain Ltd, in honour of Ada Lovelace Day. Missed the first bit? Find it here. One of the biggest issues for programme managers (well, for me) is the transient nature of a team over the lifecycle of work, especially when a programme…
It’s Ada Lovelace Day, and in honour of the great woman here is an interview with a modern great woman in technology, Dr Sophie Kain. My conversation with Sophie went on a bit, so I’ve split it into two pieces: one for you to read with morning coffee and one for afternoon tea. Sophie is…
“Most books on branding,” Adam says, “focus on what it takes for a brand to be great: follow these steps, tick the boxes on a flow chart.” “PRINCE2® training is just like that,” I reply. “If you complete these documents your project will be a success. That’s not how things work in the real world.”…
If a visitor came into your office looking for you, and asked a colleague to point you out, what would they say? The short, messy one? The busy one with her glasses on her head? If a colleague was describing you to someone from another department, how would they sum you up? A good project…
A new study* has shown that nearly half of Project, Programme and Portfolio Management Offices (PMOs) rate themselves as Fair or Poor in terms of effectiveness. I think that’s terrible, especially as it was the PMO team or those close to them who responded to the survey. As the purpose of having a PMO is…