Three wishes

Three men are working on a project in Blackpool, one is a software developer, one a hardware engineer and the other the project manager.
During their lunch break one day they decide to walk along the beach where they find a lamp. They pick it up, rub it and out pops a genii! He says that he would normally grant the person finding the lamp three wishes, but as there are three of them he will grant them one wish each.
The software developer goes first and wishes to retire to Hawaii with enough money to enjoy his retirement.
The hardware engineer goes next and wishes to spend his time sailing around the Mediterranean sea in a large yacht.
Finally the Project Manager get his wish and asks that the other two be back to work after lunch!
Do you know them???

Risk Management - Threat and Opportunity

Here is a really old story:

Many years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to investigate and report back on market potential.

The first salesman reported back, "There is no potential here - nobody wears shoes."

The second salesman reported back, "There is massive potential here - nobody wears shoes."

It made me think of the number of organisations that I come across that deal only with the threats and never see the opportunity.

Let me know what you think - mike.austin@coreis.co.uk

Project Management Sayings

I found these while surfing the web and thought that they might amuse you:

The sooner you start a task the later you finish.

What is not on paper has not been said.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well-planned project only twice as long as expected.

If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

Good project managers know when not to manage a project.

If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems.

Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager.

Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%.

The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

To estimate a project, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.

If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done.

Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.

There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.

A project gets a year late one day at a time.

I hope that a least a few of these saying raised at least a smile

Why not email me if you have more - mike.austin@coreis.co.uk

Never use a password ever again

Most organisations have severe sanctions in place for folks that write down their passwords or change them infrequently, worse still those that have 'password' as their password.
The problem is of course that passwords are difficult to remember, even more so if you are required to change it every thirty days! Take comfort - you will never need to remember a password ever again.
The solution is to use a pass-phrase. Instead of remembering Vy65d7T use, perhaps, a line from your favourite song - in my case that Talking Heads classic 'burning down the house' remove the spaces and viola! An easy remembered way into your system, just make sure that it is at least 14 characters long, that should make it uncrackable for at least thirty days when you change it for another much loved lyric.
Another risk mitigated
can we help your organisation with risk management?
Call us today on 0845 833 3210

Risk Mitigation???

Labourer’s wife Bridget Driscoll took a trip to Crystal Palace (South East London) on 17 August 1896 and whilst there was run over by Arthur Edsall's imported Roger-Benz and so became the first road accident fatality in the United Kingdom.

So what was the risk involved, the car was reportedly doing the incredibly fast speed of 4 miles per hour, the driver said that he shouted a warning when he saw the woman in his path, he also said that he rang the warning bell – not much risk you may think!

Jerry Savage a local historian at the Upper Norwood Library remarks that the Victorians had no real sense of Health and Safety and so would probably have accepted the death as some sort of tragedy, but a few risk mitigations were put in place – it was soon required that three people were to take charge of a vehicle, a driver, a fireman to keep the car fuelled and a flag man to walk 60 yards in front of the car. Speed limits were reduced to 2 miles per hour in a town and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.

The coroner at Mrs Driscoll’s inquest said that he hoped hers would be the last such fatality – it is thought that since then more than 550,000 people have died on our roads.

Ideas for thriving in today's market

I was recently introduced to these ideas and thought that I would share them with you

1. Secure your core customers.  It costs five to seven times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep the ones you already have.
2. Push for greater market share. Slashing prices is not the way to go – it signals to your competitors that you are likely to be in trouble. So concentrate on service to your established customers and selling that same service to new  prospects
3. Research customers now more than ever. Stay close to your customers; make sure that you understand how they are changing. You don’t want to find yourself relying on old information, or with a business model that customers don’t want.
4. Seek to increase - or a least maintain - your marketing budget. This is the worst time to think about cutting your marketing budget. Progressive organizations add to their marketing budgets in hard times.
5. Quickly drop what is not working. Removing failing activities before they cause too much damage.
6. Don’t discount your best products. Discounting tells your customers that you were probably overcharging in the first place, it also makes it difficult if not impossible to raise the prices again.
7. Save the best; lose the others. In a difficult economy, you need to make your best products even better. Don’t waste time or money on products that are adding nothing to your core income.

People who impress

Some 40 years ago I worked for a remarkable man, he had been bankrupt twice, but such was his belief in what he was doing he pawned (hocked - if you are in the USA) his wife's wedding ring to start his business a third time. He died a multi-millionaire!

But you know what impressed me most? When the welders refused to work overtime to get a warehouse ready for the grand opening - he stripped of his shirt and did it himself.

Makes you think

PRINCE2 Practitioner Examination Advice

The PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam is designed to determine if the candidate is capable of applying PRINCE2 to running  a straightforward project. To get this far you would already passed the Foundation Exam, now you will need to understand how to tailor PRINCE2 to a given Case Study.

So you will need to:

Understand the principles, processes and themes.

Understand how the processes relate to each other.

Understand the what, why, how and who of the principles, processes and themes.

Understand how to apply PRINCE2 to different types and sizes of projects.

Understand how PRINCE2 might work in a programme environment.

How are you going to prove such understanding?

The exam consists of nine questions (12 marks) each containing several sub-questions worth one mark each, the total marks available are therefore 108.

All questions should be answered within 2.5 hours.

You may use the PRINCE2 manual during the exam, but no other reference material is allowed.

You will need to gain 55% of the marks to pass.

Exam preparation:

Ensure that you have completed some sample exam questions, the OTE format (a style of complex multiple-choice examination) is one with which you may not be familiar – don’t be surprised on exam day.

Be certain that you can navigate the manual quickly and easily – it is surprisingly easy to waste a lot of time trying to find information.

Attempt all the questions – this needs good time management. My experience says that you are more likely to pass if you make an attempt at all of the questions.

Read the questions carefully including any extra information.

Make sure that you understand the use of the words  ‘should’,’would’,’could’,’will’ etc in the questions.

For further help call us on 0845 833 3210

or Click here to send us an email

Free telephone/email advice

Another FREE offer from Core I.S.!

Again no catch, unless by catch you mean that we offer free advice to those wise folks that have attended one of our courses - no matter if it was years ago.

If you have a problem or you would just like to run an idea past an independent mind - call us - we always have time for our customers.

If you want advice and you are not one of our customers, call us anyway, take advantage of our FREE consultancy offer.

I look forward to getting you call on 0845 833 3210 or click here to email us.

Brain Surgery

No brain surgeon, no matter how talented, would consider operating on himself - he is too close to the problem!

So it is likely that the senior management of any organization are likely to also be too close when it comes to change and change management.

Why not let Core IS take a 'stand back' look so that we can offer help.

Often we can spot barriers to change that may not be obvious to the folks that are involved.

Barriers to successful change often include -

• Most people would rather maintain the status quo, so do not start making changes in good time.
• Failure to involve stakeholders in the early stages.
• Failure to create and communicate the 'vision'.
• Failure to deal with the barriers that delay change.
• Stopping before the change has been embedded into the organization

Why not call us for a chat today - 0845 833 3210

or click here to email us

The times they are a changin'

The times they are a changin' - so sang Bob Dylan, here in 2010 he could not have been more right!

Charles Darwin wrote that it is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, it is the most adaptable to change. So how good is your organization at adapting to changes in the world of business? Are you going to be among the fittest that survive? Perhaps your change management is so good that you will thrive not just survive.

Is it possible to know ahead of time who is the most likely to thrive? We at Core IS believe that it IS possible.

A while back we 'blogged' about our free one day consultancy offer, but did not give much detail, intentionally so, but perhaps that led to some misconceptions about exactly what we were offering. Perhaps I can put that right...

We propose coming to your organization no matter how big or small, spending a day looking at ways to improve the way that you handle change. At the end of the day if you wish we will sit down with your senior management and discuss our findings, we will follow that up with a written report containing the actions that we think you should take.

Of course we would like to think that you would hire us to help you to make the changes, but we will not be offended if you say 'Thanks, but no thanks'. If you do think that we can help to develop some processes that you can implement or if you decide that we can train your staff to help to ensure that your business thrives -GREAT! Having helped in whatever way that we can, we don't then leave you high and dry we are always at the end of a telephone or an email to add further help with particular problems.

So why not start a relationship with us today? Take us up on our offer. What can you lose? It's free!

Telephone 0845 833 3210 today
or click here to email us today

Who said 'It's good to talk'?

A Common Language

I have a friend who is the head teacher at a school in inner London (UK) where sixty four different languages are spoken. Most classes need at least one interpreter in attendance! Her biggest wish is for a common language - without one it is difficult to make progress and any progress made is really slow.

Does this ring a bell? Does your organisation suffer because programme and projects skills are not transferable?
Managing Successful Programmes and Prince2 are often accused of being full of jargon, but it is just the sort of thing that my head teacher friend wishes for every day.

Makes you think!

The Wedding Planner

A few weeks ago I was attending a meeting the hotel receptionist was discussing her daughter's wedding with her colleague. It became obvious that what was needed was some Project Management!

When I returned to the office I posted her a copy of our "No Nonsense PRINCE2" guide.

A couple of weeks later I received a thank you letter describing how they had used the process and some product based planning and how easy it made the task. Let's hope that they realised the benefits!

Just goes to show that PRINCE2 can be tailored to suit any project.

Free Courses from Core IS

We will give you a course of your choice free of charge!

So what is the catch?

No catch - For each friend or colleague that books, pays for and attends a Core IS course we will give you 10 Referral Points. Each referral point is a 1% discount that you may use on any of our courses.

For instance if you were to refer one person you get a 10% discount (10 Referral Points). Refer ten people, get 100 Referral Points and your selected course is free. Refer twenty people and you get two free courses. There is no limit to the number of free courses that you can earn!

We will even transfer the discount to a third person that you nominate.

For more details call us now on 0845 833 3210 or email info@coreis.co.uk

An Executive Guide to Portfolio Management

The Pocket Executive Guide to Portfolio Management arrived this morning and what a useful little guide it is.

"Portfolio management is a discipline whose time has come." so says Nigel Smith, Chief Executive for the OGC, so true - and not just for the public sector. In hard times it is even more important to face the challenge of ensuring successful delivery and the benefits of business change, it is here that portfolio Management can help to facilitate organizational survival and growth.

Make sure that you invest in the right programmes and projects - email us at info@coreis.co.uk to discover how we can help or call on 0845 833 3210.

Training Organisations going into administration

In these difficult times it is almost inevitable that some training organisations will find themselves in administration, indeed one organisation has suffered that fate in the last few days.

This means that a number of people have found themselves without a training course that they were hoping to attend. Indeed we have had a number of telephone call asking us to help.

We have decided that here at Core I.S. we will honour any confirmed prices that apply to courses that were to be run by organisations that have fallen this way, more than that we will try as far as possible to run the courses on or close to the dates that were booked.

Tel: 0845 833 3210 or email sales@coreis.co.uk

PRINCE2, M_o_R & MSP Re registration courses

In the current situation it is essential that we keep our skillset up to date.

In the programme, project and management of risk world, employers seem to be insisting on the current OGC qualifications as a minimum.

The PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R Examination Boards determined that all PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R Practitioners should be re registered within 3 - 5 years of their original certification to maintain best practice.

To maintain your PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R Practitioner status you will need to sit a short examination set at the same level as the Practitioner examination. Courses for re registration at Core IS are scheduled during the week or at weekends to suit your workloads, holidays and personal choice.

Courses are 2 days in duration - Contact Core IS for full details.

Tel - 0845 833 3210 or email - sales@coreis.co.uk

Free Consultancy Offer from Core IS

Core IS are offering one day of free consultancy.

• Let us 'healthcheck' your business processes.
• Let us help you manage change more effectively.

Includes a senior management briefing and final written report.

About P3O

Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3O®) is the latest best practice guidance from OGC.

Background to P3O
A P3O model provides a decision enabling/delivery support structure for all change within an organisation. This may be provided through a single permanent office which may exist under several different names, for example Portfolio Office, Centre of Excellence, Enterprise or Corporate Programme Office.

It may otherwise be provided through a linked set of offices (portfolio office, programme offices, project offices). These offices could be permanent (enabling/supporting business objectives and consistency of delivery) and temporary (enabling/supporting specific programmes and projects), providing a mix of central and localised services.

OGC's PRINCE2®, Managing Successful Programmes, and Management of Risk all touch on the need to provide adequate support structures for these best practices. Until now there has been no single source of information that either organisations or individuals can use for guidance or advice on setting up or running an effective delivery support office.

The guidance will provide:

An Introduction to P3Os - Discussing why, when and how to use P3O® models including the difference between portfolio, programmes and project environments and their different requirements


Value - What value P3Os can bring to the organisation including a business case, funding models and performance measures


Model - An overview of the different P3O models with examples


Functions and Techniques - Details on the functions/services and techniques/tools used by units of a P3O model.

MSP & M_o_R Course costs 2010

In line with our PRINCE2 & P3O courses we have lowered the costs of our MSP & M_o_R courses for 2010.

The cost of a Foundation course - 3 days with the Foundation exam is now £845.00 + VAT for both MSP & M_o_R.

The cost of a Practitioner course - 5 days with the Foundation and Practitioner exams is now £1150.00 + VAT for MSP & M_o_R.

All delegates receive a CD ROM of Foundation style questions,The OGC Manual, course manuals, APMG exam fees, APMG certificates, lunches and light refreshments during the course.

All venues have ample FREE Parking for delegates.
All Core IS delegates receive pre and post course e mail/telephone support if needed.

New Course Costs for 2010

To give all delegates better value for money we have restructured our course costs for 2010.
All courses are now pre 2005 costs to help you get the best training for the best value.

Foundation courses - £795.00 + VAT in PRINCE2 and P3O.
Practitioner courses - £995.00 + VAT in PRINCE2 and P3O.

Please contact us for any other courses .

All courses include - Core IS Pre course reading materials, OGC manuals, course materials, APMG exam fees, APMG certificates, lunches and light refreshments on our public courses.

Contact us to book onto your chosen course. Details of all courses are on our website.
Book directly at http://www.coreis.co.uk/

Courses and News for 2010

We were welcomed back to 2010 with snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Some were fortunate to be able to get to the office, others had to weather the first days of the new decade at home. Mixed feelings I'm sure!

At Core IS we look forward to another year of providing training and consultancy services to all our existing clients and future clients.

In the second quarter of 2010 we will begin our P3O courses, the Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices methodology.

Our PRINCE2 courses continue to be extremely popular at all our training venues, as are our MSP (Programme Management) and M_o_R (Management of Risk) courses. We have now introduced MSP training in the United States and hold public courses there at regular intervals.

We always offer our "in house" training options to enable companies and organizations to train several people within the workplace.

For any information of the above please visit our website - http://www.coreis.co.uk/ or contact us for further details.