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The other day, I was talking to an artist friend and he related an anecdote about the fourteenth-century Italian painter Giotto. Apparently, Pope Boniface VIII

Recently, several people have asked me to explain the difference between systems engineering and software engineering. My answer was rather longer than I expected… For

Recently I read an intriguing story of the orator and statesman, Cato the Elder, who lived around 2200 years ago. At the age of eighty,

At a recent science meeting, I was listening to a speaker describe his researches into ancient solar eclipses. As these events are so striking and

A colleague of mine recently mentioned a service-acquisition approach that formalises one of the risk-reduction approaches used by Agilier. The approach, known as “Evolutionary Acquisition”

I’m always on the lookout for techniques to improve the sometimes-strained relationship between customers and suppliers. I recently came across an article describing an interesting

An interesting recent whitepaper has caught my attention recently Professor Barry Boehm and a colleague have updated Boehm’s venerable systems-development method known as the Spiral

I’m interested in historical sea-voyages of discovery, and I was intrigued to read that on Columbus’s 1492 voyage, his crew were ill at ease about

I was asked recently to provide a few thoughts on running a programme office in agile software development environment. Agile teams run with considerably lower

One of the issues with running an agile project is gaining credibility with senior management. Much of can be achieved by using a good communication

I was reading the other day about a curious incident on a plane flight that involved a problem with the airline’s business rules. A passenger

I was privileged recently to attend a presentation by Malcolm Lewis. Malcolm is a practising chartered accountant but nowadays he combines his extensive “hard” business

I was privileged recently to attend a presentation by Malcolm Lewis. Malcolm is a practising chartered accountant but nowadays he combines his extensive “hard” business

I was recently facilitating a client’s requirements workshop and noticed that one of the attendees was swaying opinion by inappropriately evangelising technical solutions. Although some

I have recently been working on a system-engineering project where there were issues with team members having different understandings around the definition of “goal”. This

On large software projects, one group of stakeholders that I find are routinely missed are regulators. This group can be regarded as a proxy for

In the past, I have led a number of projects where the team members have had very different levels of learning, making it difficult to

A colleague of mine had a recent example of what I term “overzealous CRM”. He was surfing a website and had logged in to his

I’m often asked to intervene in large programmes within corporate governance environments. Typically, these often run for years, are documentation-heavy and find it difficult to

We’ve come across some recurring problems during interventions in large systems programmes.  These programmes often run for years, are documentation-heavy and find it difficult to

One of the fascinating things about consultancy is to see what information documentation employees find important, compared to what is officially published by the organisation.

Kano analysis was created by Professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s and is used to optimise a product by categorising its features by perceived customer

I was recently involved in a discussion on the pros and cons of service credits. A service credit is a refund given by a supplier

“No plan survives contact with the enemy” is a phrase I’ve often heard used in a business context as an excuse for not planning properly

The theory of four levels of competency is well known in knowledge-transfer environments but it’s also worth considering in business change environments. The theory describes

I was pleased to attend a recent presentation that referred to Sir Keith Park, a senior Royal Air Force commander in the Second World War

It’s well known that companies can claim market-share from competitors by offering a product that has fewer features than their rivals’ but that performs better

A nice quote from the Brian Marick’s excellent website about his approach to new consultancy projects: “Before I visit, I have a phone conference with

Following a recent presentation, a debate started around the most expensive typo that people had encountered. My own contribution to the discussion was my experience

Ada Lovelace: daughter of Byron, friend of Dickens, muse of Babbage…and the world’s first computer programmer – some thoughts for Ada Lovelace Day (24 March).

As I have been staying in hotels rather often recently, I have noticed that Internet access varies widely from establishment to establishment; varying from almost-nil

One of the challenges with obtaining the requirements for large corporate software systems is to obtain the same world-view with all parties involved. For example,

Ordering some more Post-its the other day reminded me of the story of their discovery at the 3M company. The adhesive was invented nearly fifty