Troubled financial institution Citigroup has decided to move around several of its executives in what appears to be an attempt to quell the concerns that federal regulators have had about the company. Former president and chief operating officer of FleetBoston Eugene Mcquade has been tapped to become chief executive of Citibank, while CFO Ned Kelly will be replaced by chief accounting officer John Gerspach.
Federal regulators from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have long criticized Citigroup’s management for its apparent lack of experience in retail and commercial banking. Mcquade has the plenty of the kind of experience that the FDIC has …read more

Strategy+Business proposes more attention be given to “emerging markets“:
Many corporate leaders recognize this opportunity, but few are developing the capabilities or the management focus that they will need to realize its full potential.
That’s a legitimate comment based on some of the facts involved. But they then go on to assume that they know what these companies are “thinking”:
They persist in thinking of these new markets as “emerging markets,” separate from their existing customers in the industrialized world.
The tone of this comment borders on accusing companies of illogical prejudice. In other words, they aren’t like us so we will not serve …read more

CIO Insight’s piece on innovation led me to try to find some gold nuggets. After wading through the article I did! Page 4 reveals a comment about governance models when talking about FedEx:
“You won’t find FedEx’s innovation-driven culture at most companies. McKinsey’s research points to one obstacle to innovation: While a vast majority of corporate executives say innovation is one of their top three priorities for boosting growth, the lack of coherent governance practices tends to curtail their efforts.
When surveyed last fall about the ways in which their company oversees innovation practices, more executives (36 percent) pointed to an ad …read more

My post on Overcoming Language Barriers facilitated some very nice sharing of resources. Executives and managers! You need to familiarize yourself with this information; you will benefit through improved understanding of what your IT projects should be doing for you:
1. Excellent discussion on Domain Driven development from Sensei at ActiveEngine’s Cool Stuff post. This is more than a software development discussion- it deals with how to attack problems from a value perspective as you develop “language” between technologists and users. I suggest reading the transcript and paying close attention to Eric Evans’ thoughts- great reading.
2. Great, and thankfully brief, agile …read more

No, that’s not me- it’s Einstein doing his first post!
Thought I’d tell you what you seem to like here at Project Management 411. Looking over my viewing statistics I see that you like controversy, trends, packaged series, New Years stuff, and soul searching two-worders. So, take a look at what other’s have been reading in order of popularity:
No. 1. What’s Harder Project Management or Management?
No. 2. Business Technology Trends Create More Projects
No. 3. Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series
No. 4. New Year’s Resolutions for Better Project Control
No. 5. Losing Touch
Comments from readers is what drives me to blog these days; there …read more

Intelligent Enterprise article “The Seven Pillars of BI Success” closed with a success story where agile software development processes came into play. 1-800 Contacts, winner of 2006 TDWI Best Practice Award, first aligned their BI project with a call-center-incentive project. The agile software development approach fostered high value innovative ideas to allow monitoring and improvement of agent performance mainly by giving the agents a way to monitor themselves. A large part of the success was attributed to the agile approach to collaboration with users:
Before picture: “Business would shout, and IT would do a fire drill and throw something out there.”
After …read more