Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

One bad pun and a dose of Jennifer Crusie (fan club motto: "Got Snark") led to this icon I made for marypcb over the weekend.

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Strikes me as a good thing - the Moomins and fun genre fiction, along with a chance to hone my photoshoppery. For those interested, the book in the Snorkmaiden's hand is What The Lady Wants, which mixes noir and romance in the manner that Cruisie later explored again in Fast Women.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of a spare Amazon voucher to pre-order the upcoming collaboration with Bob Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman. Don't Look Down was such great fun, I'm looking forward to their authorial rematch...

No more, no less. Today (as I've said elsewhere) is the 15th birthday of SMS. It's surprising what you can say in a message: it could be a throw away comment or something important. But it's said.

Sometimes it's good to get your teeth into a meaty subject that's more than a little esoteric. One such subject is project portfolio management, which I've been looking at on and off for the last few years. So I jumped at the chance to write a 2000 word overview on the subject for El Reg...

It's hard enough trying to run one development project, let alone several. Managing a whole portfolio of projects across a business can easily be compared to juggling Fabergé eggs in a tornado, with only one arm.

Projects need to be delivered on time, to the original requirements. Resources need to be deployed appropriately – whether they're staff or infrastructure. Then there's the really tricky bit, making sure that all the projects are aligned with the business aims. Today's flexible businesses need IT departments that can respond to changing needs – adapting project plans quickly.

It's no wonder that a new generation of project management tools has arrived, tools that are able to bring information in from multiple sources to help control the myriad IT projects that cover white boards and fill spreadsheets.

Read on and become enlightened. It's a wonderful whole new world of project governance - with tools to make it easier.