Well, just when the start of my year couldn't get any busier, semester one of my university study kicks in.

This year I am however rather excited as I will be studying some interesting topics including Social Media Networks for Business and having worked in companies and implemented some Social Media strategies before it will be interesting as to the approach taken by our lecturer and how the theory stacks up to the real world.

Part of the assessment is to keep a blog of your thoughts and reflection on the topics of social media that we study so I will be posting regularly here with my progress and hopefully some interesting and useful information that you could pick up and practically implement yourself.

Projects are set in a highly complex and challenging environment. Effective projects require the best of technical and people skills from project managers, a supportive organisational structure, teams which can perform with a minimum of conflict, consideration of project risks and clearly defined criteria of success. These key factors as discussed in this series offer an insight into the many challenges that must be overcome and managed by today's project managers. If it is accepted that in project management, “no project ever goes 100% according to plan” (Randolph & Posner, 1994, as cited in Clarke, 1999, p. 141) this can be considered and appropriate steps can be taken when beginning new projects.

The last key factor to be discussed in this series is whether or not well defined and measurable criteria of project success exist and have been agreed upon by both internal and external stakeholders at the beginning of the project (Jugdev & Müller, 2005). The different stakeholders involved in a project, such as project managers, project team, functional management and external clients may all have different perspectives as to the goals and requirements of the project being carried out (Jugdev & Müller, 2005). With this in mind there is a need to establish more objective measures of exactly when the project can be considered successful.

The majority of decisions made by project managers are conducted under conditions of uncertainty and risk. This is especially true during the initiation phase of the project life-cycle, where uncertainty is at its highest (Meredith & Mantel, 2006). All projects are predisposed to risk due to complexity and many factors that are outside the control of the project manager. However, a common factor of projects that are successful is that the project manager usually considered, and planned to some degree, the possible risks they were likely to face (Pinto, 2007).

It is important that an appropriate project manager with the right balance of skills is put in place to ensure a successful project. It is said that a good project manager must act like a “mini-CEO” (Pinto, 2007, p. 119) and must be proficient in both the technical skills of a manager balanced with the people skills of a leader.

Carrying on looking at some of the challenging factors to effective project management today we look at the particular organisational structure that project style work is set in and how that impacts on the project. 

The organisational structure the project is expected to operate in can adversely affect the outcome of a project. Traditional functional structured organisations attempting to respond to the increasingly complex business environment are introducing formal project methodologies and forming what is known as Matrix structures. Thirty & Deguire (2007, p. 655) supports this by suggesting that there is a tendency for organisations to try to “force-fit” the ideas of project management to existing structures in lieu of “looking for ways to adapt the organisation to the project-based approach”.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Years to everyone I have worked with over the past year... I love my work and solving your business problems and applying great technlogy to do so!

I am pleased to announce that a major web project I have been working on over the past few months for the New Zealand Young Professionals Network (NZYP) has launched.

In reality it has been almost a year in the making if we factor in the initial consulting and business analysis the took place pre-project when Canterbury Young Professionals (CYP) approached me with their idea to revamp their website. Even though there is no formal NZYP organisation, the idea quickly turned into a joint venture between Auckland, Dunedin and Canterbury Young Professional Organisations (YPO's) as a collaborative project dubbed “NZYP” with the groups working together toward a common set of goals.

Blindly applying technology to business problems is sometimes the bane of my existance as a techology consultant.

I find a large portion of my time in working with clients is in the realm of educatating them about the best options and use of technology for their specific situation but also a good portion of business analysis.

Business Analysis (BA) involves spending that extra time with my clients business and getting to understand what makes them tick, how they are doing things and the formal workflow processes they follow.

All too often during a first meeting and brainstorm I may be asked to slap a technology related solution on to automate an existing process.
"Why do you do it that way? Do you understand the why of what is being done... have you mapped it out?" is often worth bringing up with them at this stage.

I do think we need more meaning in the work we do today and will do in the future.

The millennials will be an interesting generation I think, they are brought up digital natives on the internet, gaming, mobile, instant feedback, less worry about privacy online and communicate via social media and with more frequency.

Are they the victor by having a much more open level of connection with their social graph or are they failing to realise what this all means in the long run? Perhaps older gernations are just being paraniod about online privacy having come through the transition to the technology driven world we live in now.