The tension between Europe as a whole and the US has been growing a lot, as the hyperscalers are basically all American. I wrote about this risk a while ago. The problem is capacity. The commercial advantages of cloud hosting don’t go away just because they data risk has increased, they just don’t win against … Read more
This is the second article about the Digital Infrastructure North conference. The first DIN article is linked here. The second part of the day was about data centres. The speaker from the company that sells very expensive equipment to put into data centres thought it was very important that we built more data centres. Maps … Read more
I attended an interesting event last week, which was a little outside of my normal stomping grounds. Digital Infrastructure North 26 was about, er, digital infrastructure. In the north. It was a definite shift away from my usual startup and business development sessions. It re-activated some old pathways in my brain, and I want to … Read more
A huge amount has been written about the role of project managers in, uh, project management – makes sense, right? A lot less has been written about the vitally important role of the project sponsor. That’s a trifle odd, seeing as in theory they are the most important person in the project – they are … Read more
Ah, the Lessons Learned Register, that most noble of project management artefacts. It selflessly exists not to make your project better (though it may) but to help those who come after strengthen their projects, avoid the pitfalls you discovered the hard way, and keep your successors on the righteous path of clear scope, cost, quality, … Read more
Close your eyes. Imagine a castle. Picture it in your mind. What does it look like? What is it made of? Now think of the towers. Are they square? Round? Tall? Short? Do they have windows? I have a point, I promise you. The thing is, you could have imagined a variety of designs. Castle … Read more
We are a tool using species. It is one of our defining characteristics, and one of the ways we have been able to be as successful as we are. But there is another side to this – first we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us. We all know this, and it is … Read more
If you ask a project manager what their job is, they’ll usually tell you about planning, scheduling, risk management, and stakeholder engagement. These are the right answers – they’re the things on the certification exam, the things that appear in the job description, the things that a good project manager genuinely does. They are not, … Read more
Ask five people what digital sovereignty means and you’ll probably get seven different answers. The definitions vary by industry, by sector, by geography, and by if the person you ask is trying to sell you their own version of it. So here’s what I mean by it, and why I think this is a useful … Read more
Ask most project managers what they think of governance and you’ll get a weary answer. Governance means meetings that go on too long. Governance means reports that nobody reads. Governance means a steering group that last met six months ago and can’t remember what the project is trying to do. That cynicism is understandable, because … Read more
