No longer a teenager......

The world wide web is twenty years old today - wow !!

As someone over the age of 40 I can remember when I first encountered email about 15 years ago and when I developed my first website on a 386 Mz laptop with 4M RAM !!

Of course my kids take it all for granted & I bore them all to death explaining how a hyperlink works.

But just take a few moments to think about the revolution which has occurred over the last 20 years. The information which is available at the click of a mouse, the ability to send instant messages to someone on the other side of the world, the ability to publish and be damned.

The international barriers to communication will never be erected again, the progress to democracy is inevitable, the freedom to publish and debate can never be censored.

Of course not everything about the web is great, we all know the dangers it can present to sensitive minds and like everything else can be a force for evil as well as good. (& I choose those terms deliberately)

When I've finished this article I will place a link on Twitter & hopefully some of you out there will read it and ponder.

Happy Birthday World Wide Web !!!!!

10 reasons you should be a project manager..........

1) You schedule everything.......including your sex life.

2) You can make a cup of tea, butter toast & put your tie on simultaneously (female project managers can do even more!)

3) Your thoughts are constantly 6 months in the future.

4) You can claim credibility for the actions of your team members with a totally clear conscience.

5) Your partner doesn't understand what the hell you're talking about.

6) People ask you what a Project Manager does and you struggle to answer.

7) If a project goes really, really well everyone wonders why.

8) You know what its like to be the sh*t in the sandwich.

9) Your a jack of all trades and master of none.

10) You're so thick skinned you could be a rhinoceros.

Zen and the art of Project Management...

(with apologies to Robert M Pirsig)

In a previous role I was a Project Manager on a complex electronics product which had a number of unique features, it was the first product to use an external wafer fab and it was also packaged in a new SOT pack never used before by our company. The team comprised design engineers, marketeers, quality personnel, test engineers and various others with an interest in the product. Quite a challenge and one which I thoroughly enjoyed.

After 9 months hard work by everyone involved the project was delivered within the agreed timescales. A fantastic achievement for all the team.

A couple of weeks later I was at a Senior Management shindig when a very Senior guy in the company commented that the project had went very well and came in on time, which was fantastic but did I have any idea why ?

Not wishing to blow my own trumpet I suggested that perhaps the project manager had done a good job.

This was met with a perplexing look followed by muted congratulations and a swift exit.

It made me think that the more effective the project manager the more invisible he/she becomes.

A Zen moment indeed.

Is it time to reduce outsourcing .......???

As the credit crunch increases its grip on the world economy is it time to review your outsource strategies ?

Over the last decade we have seen increasing levels of outsourcing in the U.K to the point where very little of our electronic goods are actually manufactured in the U.K. This has led to a loss of manufacturing jobs, the impact of which is being felt particularly harshly at the moment. However it could be strongly argued that many more R&D jobs would have been lost had outsourcing of manufacture not been widely adopted.

The U.K (& indeed the U.S) still remain major centres for R&D in the industry and we lead the world in innovative solutions.

There is no doubt also that the outsourcing of manufacturing activities has greatly benefited the consumer, just look what you can get for your money in terms of mobile phones, digital cameras, widescreen T.V's, etc etc

This is a good time to review our outsourcing strategy and every company will have a different response, what you outsource depends on your core skills and capabilities, your views on IPR and the needs of your customers.

In our view outsourcing remains a key fundamental strategy bringing benefits to the OEM and the consumer.