A Coffee Conversation on Career Progression

I was having coffee recently with one of my team members and the coffee conversation soon became a coaching session on career progression. These conversations come up often and I have given the same advice (or variants of it) many times. I wanted to share some of it here. You need to

Characteristics of a ‘True’ Analyst

Having worked as a ‘Business Systems Analyst’ for several years, I often ask myself: “What are the quintessential attributes of an analyst”? And, every time I ask this question to myself, there are few attributes that always come to the mind: Fearless -Asking questions when things are

My First SDK Experience

The other day, we were thinking back to our first custom SDK project. I thought it might be interesting to share how it started. And, as with many things it started with a client coming to us with a problem… The Problem: We have been engaged to develop a dashboard for a client.  One o

Project X Ltd Announces Exclusive North American Re-seller Partnership with 6 Degrees Planning

21 January 2015, Toronto, On – Project X Ltd announced today that is has entered into a reseller alliance agreement with New Zealand-based Theta for the promotion, sales and support of its Six Degrees enterprise planning software in Canada and the United States. Six Degrees is a

Proper Project Communication is Key…right?

I was chatting with a friend recently about a project she is on that she described in her own words as a ‘master disaster’ – timelines in jeopardy, cost overruns, unrealistic expectations, and frustrated team. I thought back to my own experiences and research and my first

Project Plans and the SDLC Continued…Project Plan Models

Last week we talked about Project Plans and the SDLC and touched on the waterfall model of project plans. In case you missed the first post you can read it here. This week we will talk about other project plan models… The fountain model recognizes that although some activities c

Project Plans and the SDLC

As we all know every project starts with a plan.  It is crucial to have a roadmap to guide you on any endeavour that you plan to undertake.  As it is said, if you don’t have a plan then you plan to fail.  Of course, we need to have a plan that depicts your objectives and incorporates

Get Anyone To Do Anything

From a book called "Instant Influence" I extracted the following six questions: Why might you change?  (for yourself why might I change?) How ready are you to change  – on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means "not ready at all" and 10 meands "to

Give The Client or Customer 10% More

Do you have a delighted customer or client?  I bet you are in demand.  Harvey Gellman, my mentor and business partner, had a saying "Give the client ten percent more than they expect."   Don't just meet their expectations but exceed them. That is really

Communications – Listening

In consulting listening is one of the most important skills and one of the most difficult for me.  I find that my ability to problem solve, my tendency to rush to solution and my preconceived ideas and prejudices all get in the way of listening well.  My thoughts and eager