Infolific » Technology

Improving Your Team Skills

Guest Author — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:06:31 +0000

North American Corporations love teams — groups of employees with all the technical skills and authority needed to manage themselves. There are many kinds of self-directed teams — quality circles, management teams, work teams, and problem-solving teams are just a few examples. Teams plan, organize, staff, lead, control, and measure. [...]

The 5 Habits Of Highly Dysfunctional Companies

Guest Author — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:12:55 +0000

The concept of management by projects is a non-starter. The average company is not a project-driven company, and likely never will be. So why is this an idea that continues to be so prevalent? What problems -- real or perceived -- do it's proponents hope to address? And if the [...]

How to Turn $10 Million into $100 Million

Marios Alexandrou — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:11:06 +0000

Not sure you can wait until 65 to retire? Here are 4 steps to making a fortune in just a few years. Step 1: Start a niche service. For example, manage everyone's RSS feed and add a little value on top with some creative services. Step 2: Convince venture capitalists [...]

10 Steps to a Successful Project

Marios Alexandrou — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:22:57 +0000

The state of Maine spent $25 million on a web-based Medicaid claims system. In exchange for all that money, they got a $300 million backlog in unprocessed claims. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal, does it? The details of this web services project were unique, but the problems were [...]

Moving Beyond Recruiters Tip #1

Stuart Ridder — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:14:39 +0000

Enlisting the help of a recruiter to find contracts for you can be quite helpful. However, if you want to get an instant raise, find your own contracts. You can then bill the company at the same rate that a recruiter would bill, but you get to keep the 25% [...]

What Makes Effective Managers?

Guest Author — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:53:35 +0000

In general, effective managers are those who (1) possess certain important skills and (2) are able to use these skills in a number of managerial roles. Probably no manager is called on to use any particular skill constantly or to play a particular role all the time. However, these skills [...]

Cloudmark Desktop Beats Spam

Marios Alexandrou — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:18:26 +0000

Back in 2003 I started to use an Outlook plug-in called SpamBayes to filter spam. For over two years this plug-in worked beautifully behind the scenes filtering most spam with next to no false positives. But recently, its performance has become less impressive. SpamBayes uses a learning algorithm to, over [...]

Phishing

Marios Alexandrou — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:04:55 +0000

Phishing, the use of legitimate looking e-mails that attempt to trick people in to giving out personal information, is on the rise. It's not hard to see why. Rather than digging through mounds of data looking for credit card numbers, social security numbers, and bank account info, criminals can now [...]

Working for Free on a 1099

Stuart Ridder — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:31:12 +0000

A reader of a now-defunct message board once wrote... I'm a first time contractor and have been at it for two years now, working for a friend's services company. There are four partners with the other four of us 1099 contractors. Within the last year they have been asking me [...]

Surviving a Project Audit

Marios Alexandrou — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:15:35 +0000

In the January 2007 issue of PM Network there's an article about project audits. I've never been through an audit probably because I haven't run one of the mega-projects with scopes a mile wide and budgets large enough to buy an island that are the mainstay of auditors. Regardless, I [...]

Job Boards Can Be Useful

Stuart Ridder — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:55:03 +0000

Many people think that applying to job postings on sites like Monster and HotJobs is a waste of time. I think this idea comes from having applied to many jobs and never getting an interview for any of them. Back when I used to use job boards, I had similar [...]

Best of Blogs Awards

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:06:41 +0000

As a follow-up to my earlier, half-humorous post on how the recent 2000 Bloggers effort was depressing, I thought I'd post a quick note about a more positive event taking place. And this time I'm not joking around. For those bloggers out there that can't quite get the exposure needed [...]

How Do I List My Consulting Work On A Resume?

Stuart Ridder — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:25:22 +0000

I've been working as a IT consultant for the last ten years, helping both large and small businesses to streamline their help desk operations. I've made the decision to re-enter the workforce because of increased competition and I am unsure how to list my consulting services on my resume. Some [...]

What It Takes To Become a Successful Manager Today

Guest Author — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:16:23 +0000

Everyone hears stories about the corporate elite who make salaries in excess of $250,000 a year, travel to and from work in chauffeur-driven limousines, and enjoy lucrative pension plans that provide for a luxurious lifestyle even after they retire. Although management can obviously be a very rewarding career, what is [...]

Go to Lunch

Stuart Ridder — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:00:20 +0000

If you're lucky, your co-workers, be they consultants or employees, will ask you to go to lunch on your first day as a consultant. Under no circumstances should you refuse. If you brought lunch, toss it. If you're not interested in the cuisine, suck it up. One of your primary [...]

Presentation Tips for Consultants

Stuart Ridder — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:53:14 +0000

Giving a good presentation isn't easy despite appearances. They require preparations beyond just pulling together a bunch of slides. Here are some ideas to help you succeed with your next presentation. Reasons Presenters Fail There are many things that can happen that will decrease the likelihood of success of a [...]

Project Manager Salaries

Marios Alexandrou — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:26:42 +0000

CertMag released the results of their 2005 salary survey. The survey covers a wide-range of IT-related careers. They report that, "As was the case last year, information storage and security bring the largest salaries, along with Cisco networking." And of particular interest to me, "Project managers and Java developers also [...]

Rational Unified Process (RUP) Methodology

Marios Alexandrou — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:35:32 +0000

The Rational Unified Process attempts to capture many of modern software development's best practices in a form suitable for a wide range of projects and organizations. This process recognizes that the traditional waterfall approach can be inefficient because it idles key team members for extended periods of time. Many feel [...]

Don't Accept Royalties

Stuart Ridder — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:08:14 +0000

It is very, very rare for a piece of software to go on to be a huge revenue generator for a company. As such, it's a bad idea to get in to an arrangement where your services will be paid via future profits from the project. The numbers may sound [...]

Free FTP Server

Marios Alexandrou — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:10:41 +0000

I recently wanted to backup a large number of files while traveling. These files also happened to be rather large (hi-resolution photos) so simply e-mailing them to myself wasn't going to work. This wasn't the first time I've wanted to send files to my home PC while on the road, [...]