Five keys to successful IT projects

From Tech Republic

One of the most important functions of an organization’s IT department is its ability to successfully implement projects: fixed duration activities with a specific result. Most IT leaders have realized that the commodity functions of IT, like keeping the network up and the servers humming are now a baseline expectation, and projects are increasingly becoming how they are judged on their success or failure.

IT projects can be a massive undertaking, with multimillion dollar budgets and an army of project staff and consultants that rivals a small company. With so much riding on the outcome of these projects, it’s imperative that you stack the decks in favor of success. To that effect I offer these five tips, garnered from my experiences working with companies around the world.

• IT projects don’t exist in a vacuum
• Implement processes, not software
• Decide already!
• Bring your ruler
• Partner wisely

Read about this points in more detail at Tech Republic.

These keys apply even for small IT projects. I see too many projects limping along because of a lack of will or direction, with companies wasting money in the hope that the project will magically fix itself. That is not going to happen, mainly because they are betting against the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail

From New York Times Blog

Spam, that annoying but ignorable scourge of the Web, has finally recovered from the jolt it received last November, when Internet backbone providers cut off McColo Corporation, a California Web-hosting service that spammers were using to coordinate e-mail attacks.

The average seven-day spam volume during the latter half of March is now at roughly the same levels as October of last year — around 94 percent of all e-mail — according to the antispam company Postini, a division of Google.

With the expectation that the Conficker botnet will be going live today I guess that this ratio is only going to get worse...