I have just come back from a trip to Bangalore India having been asked to set-up for a well known consultancy an offshore software development centre.
Complete Gridlock
Bangalore was selected because there is already a significant offshore IT development presence by companies such as Accenture, Honeywell Bull, Intel, IBM. It was decided that here I would pull together resource in order to set-up a 200 to 300 man software development factory.
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Posted by Kevin Brady on Wed 22nd November 2006 at 11:22 PM, Filed in Industry News
The second aspect of my visit to Florida, which left a deep impression on me, was a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre where we attended a lunch with the Astronaut Al Worden which at a price per head of $36.99 was far far too cheap for a good lunch and a honoured presentation by a real hero such as Al Worden. Al for those who do not know was the command module pilot for Apollo 15 between the 15th July and 26th August 1971 along with Commander David R.Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James B.Irwin.
Apollo 15 was the fourth manned lunar landing mission and the first to visit and explore the moon’s Hadley Rille and Apennine Mountains, which are located on the southeast edge of Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
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Posted by Kevin Brady on Sun 19th November 2006 at 11:07 PM, Filed in Industry News
As my regular readership well knows, my blog is a serious site dedicated to the improvement of project management and software development practices, with the aim of discovering new approaches, methods and solutions capable of making the currently stratospheric annual IT Project Failure rates of 70% + a thing of the past. However, today I am in the mood for going off message and talking about my recent holiday to Sunny Florida. I have travelled the length and breadth of America from Alaska to the Florida Keys but this trip has more than any other left a deep impression on me.
Two things come to mind when I reminisce about this great holiday - American patriotism & the heroes of the space programme.
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Posted by Kevin Brady on Mon 16th October 2006 at 10:29 AM, Filed in Industry News
Yesterday was an interesting day. After a hectic morning and late afternoon shooting at Bisley where I failed to achieve anything close to my average scores at 50 metres, I sat down at my desk to get involved in a telephone conference with 35 MBA Project Management students from Drake University. The invite to participate in this conference came from my good blogging buddy Timothy Johnson who regularly teaches Project Management to this enthusiastic bunch of young professionals.
Drake University
Whilst presenting and answering questions, I could not expunge from my mind the thought that the IT project management profession is in a lot of trouble.
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Posted by Kevin Brady on Sun 1st October 2006 at 11:17 PM, Filed in Industry News
I was recently looking over Scott Berkin’s Blog when I came across a statement made by one of the project managers working on Microsoft Vista:-
“After months of hearing of how a certain influential team in Windows was going to cause the Vista release to slip, I, full of abstract self-righteous misgivings as a stockholder, had at last the chance to speak with two of the team’s key managers, asking them how they could be so, please-excuse-the-term, I-don’t-mean-its-value-laden-connotation, ignorant as to proper estimation of software schedules.”
Apparently they told their VP that Vista was going to slip big time. “And he, possibly influenced by one too many instances where engineering re-routes power to the warp core, thus completing the heretofore impossible six-hour task in a mere three, summarily sent the managers back to figure out how to make it work.” “The managers re-estimated, nipped and tucked, liposuctioned, did everything short of a lobotomy — and still did not have a schedule that fit.”
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