Our world view

When we look at the state of IT in the commercial sector, we see a lot of wasted time and money - in effect, a "senseless waste of human life". Our mission is to put an end to the death march projects. We believe that:

  • organisations waste a lot of money because their IT projects run out of control
  • most IT departments don't enjoy the full trust of their business colleagues
  • those in academia haven't helped because they haven't understood the problem well enough
  • it doesn't have to be this way!

The challenges are quite straightforward, it’s about communication, teamwork and a systematic approach to doing the job. To get started you have to be open and honest about the problem and your motivation to change

The Hype

We have been in IT for a long time. When we started out the PC was just a twinkle in Mr Gates eye, the internet was just open fields and 10Mb. was a huge amount of storage space. Through those years we have seen quite a few initiatives come and go. It seems to us the IT community falls victim to wave after wave of marketing hype. Each new marvel has some core truth in it but typically ditches other important values and techniques we have learnt in the past. The whole 'OO revolution' that we lived through from the early 90's is a good example.

What happened to Software Methods?

Today, the big-Methodologies are way out of vogue because they appear to have failed. People want a "silver bullet" that solves all their problems without having to put in a lot of work. They want IT to be easy, but it just isn't. So they are easily taken in by the snake oil salesmen.

In fact, well in our view :-), IT is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Projects fail for a whole host of reasons and there just isn't one simple solution that solves it all. But the good news is that success is attainable through pulling together the best of what's already "out there" - knowledge and practices that are already in the public domain and experienced people that have a lot to offer.

The way we do business

"The Three Amigos", "The Gang of Four", "The Famous Five"... winning is about having good people but it shouldn't be about their egos! We don't see ourselves as Messiahs. That is to say, it's about graft - it's not mystical. We're trying to share our knowledge and experience and we want to make a difference to how IT is done. We believe that "honesty is the best policy". We seek an open and honest relationship with our clients. We're not in it just for the money. We want to do a good job and make a positive contribution to our clients. We need to know that we are making a difference - and giving good value for money.

We don't have all the answers

But we have a good many of them! And even when we don't, we'll be honest about what we can do to help. If we can't help, we will say so - more often than not we'll know someone who can.