Below is an important lesson for all upper and senior managers … especially those in government During the settling of the original thirteen colonies pirate ships often sailed into the harbors of coastal cities. Once in the American ports the pirates would pillage and plunder from the struggling colonists. To prevent marauding pirates from stealingRead… Read more »
CIOs in both the private and public sector are under the gun to do more with less. Agency CIOs, especially, must reduce costs, as directed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in August 2011. The OMB, for its part, expected agency heads to submit budgets that cut at least 5 percent from thisRead… Read more »
Time management is critical for local government administrators and managers. During my career in local government I found three tools that helped me retain control of my time. With the New Year here I thought I’d share these tools to see if you can incorporate them for your use. If this article is of valueRead… Read more »
The DOD caught with its Pants down – A Revolution in Risk Assessment needed? It seems to have passed commentators by, but the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently uncovered a major under-reporting of risk at the Department of Defense. (see Figure 1 below).1 The GAO’s recommendations read like a school report: the DOD shouldRead… Read more »
The Federal CIO’s 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management mandated that federal agencies complete progress reports and plans for data center consolidation. As a result, fiscal year 2011 brought the closure of more than 81 data centers, with more than 900 scheduled to shutter by FY2015, for a cost savings of nearly $5Read… Read more »
***Want more project management tips from author Chris Cairns? Join us at the Leading Great Projects session next Tuesday, 9/10 at our GovLoop Virtual Innovators Summit – free rsvp**** Nearly every government project needs to employ risk management processes and practices to ensure successful delivery. A Risk Register (or Risk Log) is one of theRead… Read more »
CIOs in the federal sector were under the gun clean house by June 12, 2012. According to the federal IT Reform Plan, these tech leaders had to demonstrate to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that, after careful review of their portfolios, they had remedied or retired underperforming applications. I recently wrote about theRead… Read more »
A couple of weeks ago, a Fed approached me on how she should approach the challenge of streamlining an integrated program management support function across multiple divisions of one overarching government organization, which has over 100 projects ranging from $250k to $1B in life-cycle costs. My answer, based on my own experience: To effectively deliverRead… Read more »
Graduate school is a challenge, no matter how you look at it. Intensive courses, fieldwork, internships — not to mention the amount of writing and reading that must be done. But no one ever said it would be easy. Adding a full-time job on top of a grad school regimen, however, can break your schedule,Read… Read more »
Identifying the business value of your portfolio is critical to overcoming hurdles I was talking with one of our Enterprise Architecture and IT Strategy partners the other day and he brought up an interesting request from a client. The client was in the midst of deploying a large enterprise portfolio management solution and the clientRead… Read more »