I have been in Information Technology (IT) since before it was called IT!
At the beginning of my technology-based career, our groups or departments were typically referred to as “Electronic Data Processing” using “Electronic Accounting Machines” and the media for the data that was processed in the accounting machines was punched cards that were either 51 or 80 columns wide. Some of the more advanced machines also used paper tape as the data media – it was so much faster than those card readers; however, like the punched cards, if the punched paper tape was ever torn or bent too much, it became un-readable.
Since that early start for my career, many things have changed, and hopefully these changes remain improvements:
- Data media has evolved to hard surfaced disks residing in a Storage Area Network (SAN) or stored in a “Cloud” for wireless access. And we now have viable Solid State Data Storage so that there will no longer be moving parts for these data storage devices.
- Computers have increased dramatically in speed, memory, and capabilities
- Speeds that were measured in 1 to 4 MHz to Chip Sets that are now measured in multiple MegaFlops (millions of Floating-Point Mathematical Operations) or faster
- Memory sizes measured in fractions of “K” (1024 bytes or characters) to Terabytes (10,000 x 1 Mega Byte or 1,024,000 bytes)
- Capabilities in computers have changed from one Stand Alone device that had to produce output either electronically for use again at another Stand-Alone device or hard copy for manual review and re-use; to the ability to network with thousands of other computers and post results to SAN or CLOUD storage resources that no longer need a wired connection to receive the data
- Wireless devices that have continuous access to the Internet and CLOUD or SAN based data that can be retrieved and processed wherever there is an adequate wireless signal from the device to the Internet to download data
- What might be next could be CLOUD based processing capability with access to secured data that also resides in the CLOUD so that the wireless device is less limited to only software and data that can be downloaded and run on these devices
My question for those of you who choose to read this material is: “How do you manage the creation of operational business capabilities with an evolving automation capability in time for being ‘first to market’ whenever possible?”
My answer is in the effective and persistent application of the best-known Project Management and Software Engineering techniques and skills available at all times.
So, this Project Management Handbook will include techniques and suggestions that help to define the scope of each project and maintain the planned efforts within that scope from Initiation to Deployment and Operational Support. It will also help to identify the work tasks, their sequences, and inter-dependencies so that the resources required at any point in time through the execution of a project’s plan are predictable in advance and that measuring the results from these plans can be quantified. These Project Management techniques will identify work that needs to be performed to review burgeoning project deliverables (from the SDLC) to their final state so that the team can repeatedly confirm that the content of these deliverables is within the Scope and are an evolution from their preceding deliverables that can successfully move the planned work of the project forward.
The Project Management Handbook provides Predictability, Labor and Cost Management, Quality of all planned Deliverables, and a Foundation for controlling Scope, Issues, Risks, and Change requests during the execution of any individual project or group of projects that are understood to make up an inter-dependent program.
Please let me know what you think about these writings using my email address: Whendoyoustoplooking@gmail.com or bgutches@thepathtoinkc.com . You can also subscribe to future materials as I develop them for my other books at my blogs in WordPress:
And the predecessors to these newer blogs:
- http://www.softwareengineeringhandbook.wordpress.com
- http://www.projectmanagementhandbook.wordpress.com
Thank you, Bill Gutches
The Path To Inkc 