adoption curve dot net

I’m really not sure whether this should come as a suprise to anyone, but it’s not just the UK government that has problems with their projects, according to this story in Wired.

Although there is an interesting quote which goes some way to getting government off the hook (or at least to put their problems into perspective):

…while government technology blunders frequently make headlines, large-scale computer upgrades in the private industry fail almost as often. But these corporate blunders aren’t publicized by congressional committees, federal investigators and inspectors general…

Some pros and cons of online meetings, from Robin Good of Corante.

Technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it

Martin Heidegger

While conference calls are a great way of bringing together a group of geographically dispersed people, they’re often frustrating experiences, particularly if you’re using a standard desktop phone. One of the problems of using a standard desktop phone on hands-free is the sound quality – they’re usually half-duplex meaning that you can speak, or listen, but not both; and most of the time you’ll sound as if you’re calling from the bottom of a well. All of which makes it very much more difficult to participate.

If you’re a regular user of conference calls, you’ll probably have used Polycom’s ubiquitous ’starfish’ conference phone at some point – and it’s a device that solves most of the problems I mentioned above. It’s great for meeting rooms, but not so practical on a desk – so check out a desk-top handset that includes conferencing facilities.

Although they’re more expensive than regular desktop phones, consider this – how much does your time cost, and how much time do you waste by asking everyone “Can you repeat that please?” Chances are, a decent-quality conference system will have paid for itself inside a month.

We’ve had some Gmail invites to give away over the last couple of weeks (sorry, all gone for now) – but if you’re new to the service, this might be of interest.

Jim Barr’s Complete Collection Of Gmail Tips is a complete collection of all the tips he’s posted on gmailtips.com It’s worth a visit if you’re new to the service and wanting to get up to speed quickly – alternatively if you’ve been using it for a while, chances are that you’ll learn something new!

The middle of a crisis is probably the last time you’re going to think of using blogs as a way of communicating – but there’s an interesting article on Fast Company that might be worth reading and mentally filing about they could be used in the midst of a PR crisis.

The standard approach to responding to a crisis is to hunker down behind closed doors. Blogs can help companies remain accessible.

But rather than waiting for a crisis to hit, a more intelligent approach would be to use of blogs to communicate about day-to-day service issues – after which they would become the natural response to a crisis situation.

A good example of this is the UK-based ISP PlusNet – they have a blog and RSS feed that they use to update customers on what’s going on with their network and service. Not only does it allow them to communicate proactively about what’s going to happen – maintenance downtime, for example – but also allows them a way of keeping customers informed about major problems as and when they arise.

And of course, this isn’t just restricted to the public face of the company. If you’re running a service function within an organisation – and if you’re not serving someone, perhaps you need to question whether you’ve got your priorities straight! – why not use an internal blog to keep your internal customers in the picture? Not only are you easing the information flows within your organisation, over time you’ll also build a much higher profile within the business – particularly important if you want to promote your function as one that adds value rather than costs.

It boils down to a maxim given to me by an older, wiser colleague early on in my project management career – “a good project is one with no surprises”. Keep people informed, and you can get away with much more!

If you use Prince2 as your in-house methodology – or you’re just interested in methodologies generally – you may also be interested in a new user group that has just been launched.

The Prince2 Community Forum (P2UG) has been set up online “to enable Prince2 users to interact with each other, share information and gain a better insight into the implementation of Prince2 in different industry sectors”.

There’s also a directory of service providers, which is free to list in.

The forum can be found at www.p2ug.com