I have a number of skills in a number of areas and have a few topics around which I can talk for 40 mins or 1-2 days!! You may consider them to be a bit eclectic and not really connected .... but in fact they are all connected through my project management, business investment and general management experience. All of them are well grounded in my personal journey ....good and bad!

I am mostly engaged through my consultancy firm HolisTech® Pty Ltd or my investment firm Padden Industries Pty Ltd, but I do have relationships with companies and businesses big and small through which I sometimes sub-contract.

Humphrey, Watts, S., Winning with Software: An Executive Strategy, Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2002

The message here is that if you wish to develop good software, particularly of any significant size, you need a robust process and a team of disciplined programmers/engineers. The operative words here are robust and disciplined. These two terms, particularly the discipline one, resonate particularly well with me, because one of the significant causes of a problem project is the lack of discipline to follow a defined process. The further message is that "quality counts" - even more so than schedule. This is particularly relevant to any business that uses software.

I said in a previous blog (The Value of a Program of Projects) that projects are a way of ".....pulling one or more of the levers of revenue, expenses or investment in a "controlled" manner. Because projects are a deliberate and "controlled" mechanism that supports proper governance with defined expenditure, risks, schedules and outcomes or benefits."

I just wish to provide more insight into what I have said.

One of my goals in life is to illustrate the value of projects to the general management fraternity. Perhaps more accurately, explaining the value of project management to executives. For a number of years now I have been "monitoring" the level of acceptance of project management into the broader management community. I do this by looking for project management books in the management "guru" sections of bookshops. I must say .... I am yet to find one devoted solely to project management. Normally the project management books are in the IT section or the academic sections. It's an interesting "index" which I have started to call the "PM guru status" index.