Search

To take Bill Clinton strategist James Carville’s famous quotation and apply it to the world of project management: “It’s the benefits and value, stupid!” But as Dr. Harold Kerzner of IIL revealed in a recent AXELOS webinar , 70% of companies fail to achieve the bene...

A project doesn’t end with delivery but with the realization of its benefits to the business. So why is corporate strategy still not being fully communicated to the project team and what steps need to be taken to ensure that it is? Without a clear understanding of corpora...

For many project managers, their role in Benefits Realization is viewed as 'not my job' or out of scope for their role. This attitude will be the death of the 'old school' project manager in a world that is much more socially conscious and holds people accountable for the...

What is effective project and programme governance and why is it important to define and establish governance arrangements for success and the realization of benefits? T he focus of many organizations , particularly in the public sector, is how to reduce the cost of opera...

Are you getting the very best from your PRINCE2 ® best practice knowledge? Sometimes, it’s useful to have a handy reminder of the key points you need to think about at any stage in a PRINCE2 project. My AXELOS has created a series of templates covering the bre...

ITIL ® and ISO/IEC 20000, the international standard for service management, have enjoyed a long and mutually supportive relationship. ISO/IEC 20000 is currently being revised for the third time, with an increased focus on Service Integration (SIAM), governance and manag...

Sue Taylor examines the importance of the blueprint in programmes and within AXELOS’ Managing Successful Programmes (MSP ® ) best practice guidance. By implementing change through a programme , an organization is trying to achieve a better future. That starts with a pr...

With continuing digital disruption, customer-focused organizations today more than ever need a portfolio-centred approach to both strategic planning and product delivery. An effective P3O model for any organization therefore seeks to build on, and better coordinate, the cont...

AXELOS’ research project – The Future Project Management Professional – found that project managers’ roles will evolve to become more strategic within their organizations. In fact, 90% recognized the need for a much stronger strategic vision that aligns with the overa...

The discipline of project management is evolving rapidly, but what does this mean for the project manager? Lisa Hodges, principal consultant at Cornerstone Service Management, explains why the future belongs to project manager 2.0. At a recent conference one of my fello...

In the world of best practice frameworks there is a risk that people jump on the latest thing, believing a particular framework is the answer to all their problems. As a species it seems we chase the one, universal quick-fix that doesn’t exist! As an expert who’s been worki...

Digital transformation offers organizations the potential to compete, stay relevant and reduce the cost of delivering services to customers and running business processes. IT service management (ITSM) provides a structured process, approach and common language along wit...

Ongoing measurement of project progress is vital. In the simplest terms, it tells you how much work has been done and what is left to do. However, in certain instances it tends only to be treated as vital when something on the project goes wrong; and only then will you hear ...

Steven Deneir – a project, programme and portfolio management trainer and coach with 20+ years’ experience – highlights his top four tips to agile project management success and reiterates the importance of ongoing learning and certification in approaches such as PRINCE2 ®...

Complex projects are characterized by a huge variety of inputs and this creates a challenging environment in which to make decisions. As human beings, we are naturally biased and often go on “gut feel”. This is fine if you are being chased by a lion, but in the complex worl...

Before we begin, let's define what culture is. Culture is a pattern of responses discovered, developed or invented during a group's history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are consid...

Lessons learned is part of the PRINCE2 ® method and is there to save time, energy, effort and the cost of making the same mistakes on another project. For example, if you’ve been in a situation before with managing stakeholders and you know how to work with them it’s ...

My AXELOS is the new, online content subscription service to help you take control of your skills development and career in project, programme and IT service management. In a recent webinar AXELOS’ head of Professional Development, Amrit Saroya, and Global Marketing...

Good P3O governance is about ensuring that all key stakeholders have a clear understanding of the portfolio, programme and project boards that are focused on 'changing the business' and how it aligns to the corporate governance structure that is focused on 'running the busine...

Scott Harberd shares his experience of implementing PPM software during a period of transformation and change for one of the UK’s largest airlines. Following a period of rapid growth and promotion to the FTSE 100, the organization was outwardly successful but highly i...

Which partnership has the most influence on a project’s success ? Though it may not be top of your list, the one between project manager and sponsor (SRO) is arguably the most critical. A positive working relationship between these two roles will help keep the project on tr...

The space in between people managing and operating IT services and those that build and deliver IT products could be called the great divide. Among developers, the thinking can - sometimes - be based on the principles of "build it and hand it over". The big issue is that the...

In our latest blog post looking at PRINCE2 ® best practice , Fiona Magee explains why the real value of the PID template is realized only if approached with the right mindset. The complete set of PRINCE2 templates covering all key business activities is available via...

Rarely does an organization design its project management method from scratch. Instead it needs to be aware of the standards, best practice methods and bodies of knowledge related to project management (e.g. BS 6079 , PRINCE2 ® , PMI’s PMBOK ® and APM’s Body of Knowle...

This will be the final post from my time here at Agile 2018 . It’s been a packed week yet in the same breath I only feel like I have scratched the surface of the content on offer. I want to end this little series by sharing a couple of thoughts from the last day, but also de...

After an absence of several years, veteran project manager John Earwood has returned to his roots and is re-taking project and programme management qualifications. Here, he reflects on how far project management has come. Before PRINCE2® was introduced, project management ...

Is there room in today’s organizations for both AXELOS’ PRINCE2 ® method and PMI’s IPECC (Initiating, Planning, Executing, [Monitoring and] Controlling, Closing)* framework described in the PMBOK ® Guide ? While PMI* provides an excellent framework for the management ...

As some of you may know, this week I’m attending the Agile Alliance conference, Agile 2018 in San Diego. The event run by the Scrum Alliance brings together many of the leading thinkers on everything agile for a whole week of talks, discussions and much more. For my part, I...

And just like that, we’re done with Day 3 of Agile 2018 ! I’m hoping that by now any readers are aware of the previous two posts about days 1 and 2, but if not...here they are: Day 1 Day 2 The last hurrah - final thoughts from Agile 2018 The focus of the po...

The PMO has evolved from a mainly admin/support function into an exciting career space – so how can today’s practitioners successfully navigate the different opportunities on offer? PMO is becoming increasingly popular as an organizational entity around project management...

Q: When is an iceberg not just a large block of ice that can sink ships? A: When it’s the hidden iceberg of attitude, behaviour and culture that stops an organization getting the full benefit from implementing ITIL ® . For example, a large European bank had adopted ...

At AXELOS, we like to explore new ways of working, as well as new ways of learning. One such way is experiential learning (or ‘learning by doing’ as it’s more colloquially known). Earlier this year, Paul Wilkinson from GamingWorks proposed running the Grab@Pizza simulation...

When organizations are not managing projects effectively, it means the value that should be delivered by projects suffers. I believe this happens in a multitude of industries, and it is impacting businesses’ bottom lines. The solution is for organizations to recognize the b...

I n recent years Romania and, more broadly, South East Europe have become a hotbed for international IT services. Due to the region’s Internet of Everything approach, the IT market is booming and facilities like Security Operations Centres (SOCs) and Network Operation Centres...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Robin presented a session on ITSM Challenges and Training Benefits . Watch the video and read her new blog post also discussing how the right training can help organization meet IT Service Management (ITSM) challenges. ...

PRINCE2 training, as with any new learning experience, yields a lot of new information for Project Managers to learn, and breaking that information down into smaller chunks can make understanding it a lot easier. So, with the textbook in mind, here are some of the most co...

The customer interface is the place where an organization meets its customers but in ITSM it’s something no one talks about enough, even though it adds so much value. In today’s economy, businesses revolve around the service experience: take the upmarket coffee house concept...

Daniel Breston shares his thoughts on why it’s a misconception that ITIL is incompatible with other practices: Practices such as lean, agile and DevOps can’t be successful without ITIL . Each of them needs to go from idea to realization, be supported in operations a...

Ten years ago, IT in India was a very different world to now: the country was the “back office” of the world, providing outsourced services in the form of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). During this period ITIL ® was the...

My view is that companies in 2017 really started discovering that one IT service management (ITSM) solution doesn’t fit all and they need a broader perspective, with different tools for different challenges. This means not only getting more frameworks and models to sit tog...

All PRINCE2 ® project, MSP ® programme and MoP ® portfolio governance bodies want updates on how well initiatives are progressing. To do this, management dashboards are a useful tool. MSP programmes aim to realize benefits resulting from changes in organizati...

I read an interesting comment by AXELOS Head of ITSM Kaimar Karu that “…the ITIL of the future is from practitioners, for practitioners.” As a result, I keenly awaited the release of the ITIL ® Practitioner Guidance so that I could use it to assess and improve my ITIL prac...

Just because you can connect a device to the internet doesn't mean you should. While connected devices (commonly called the “Internet of Things”) can deliver new services, there needs to be security, privacy and clear ownership of data. The endgame for the Internet of ...

When I analyze the tangible results my organization has achieved as a result of employees being ITIL ® competent, the return is undeniable. The benefits of ITIL training are threefold: differentiation, service improvement and cost saving. Differentiation In 2012, lev...

How can a system like ITIL® - forged in a year of seismic historical change 25 years ago - still be relevant to the world of ITSM today? Leaving aside the shift in information technology since 1989, the global changes in that year alone tell us how different the world was ba...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Hitesh presented a session on ITIL Practitioner and Service Design Roles . Watch the video and read his new blog post discussing the roles that can successfully benefit from adopting ITIL Practitioner. What is ITIL Pract...

From medical, banking and automotive, to retail and hospitality, ITIL ® best practice is being used in more and more industry sectors to improve business performance. Why is this happening? Because ITIL is a proven industry best practice that takes a holistic view of p...

What are the different approaches and benefits of programmes and projects in organizations? Rajiv Khanna assesses the differences and how the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP ® ) and PRINCE2 ® project management best practice principles and certifications can help. ...

Project management is under pressure – and organizations aren’t doing enough to get the most value from it. According to AXELOS’s PPM Benchmark Study 2017 – The Value of Project Management Excellence, about three-quarters of project managers are facing the dual challe...

Having spent an early part of his career in a business relationship management role as a Government IT Service Management (ITSM) contractor supporting NASA, Adam McCullough understands the purpose and value of Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) within organizations. In th...

A key focus of the PRINCE2 ® 2017 Update is to make it easier for individuals and organizations to adopt and tailor the world’s most-practised project management method. I’ve been helping organizations adopt and tailor PRINCE2 for over fifteen years. In truth PRINCE2 ...

Following the release of ISO/IEC TR 20000-11:2015: Part 11 - Guidance on the relationship between ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011 and service management frameworks: ITIL® at the end of 2015 , we spoke to Shirley Lacy, managing director of ConnectSphere, who was involved in i...

Why is robust governance and deploying a best practice framework so important when organizations want to introduce change? If you want changes from a business transformation programme which stick - i.e. things delivered that are embraced and used by the business operationa...

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is a key lifecycle of ITIL ® : but why should business focus on CSI and what benefits does it actually bring? To explain why businesses should focus on CSI it’s probably easier – and more powerful – to explore the organizations th...

An organization working on a major programme often needs a programme office. Major programmes are concerned with implementing complex transformational change, and this can bring with it a range of challenges. The size and impact of the change, an organization’s experience in...

Every product or service has a carbon footprint. How a project is managed, how a product is built and used, and how it is disposed of will define the harm it does to our planet. Sustainability must be judged across the entire product lifecycle. So many of the decisions tha...

It is very easy to look at best practice and/or a number of existing Project Management Offices (PMOs) in your industry sector and decide on what functions and services are ‘best’ for your organization. However, a best practice PMO has a problem-focused purpose, with its fun...

Organizational and project change is difficult because – primarily – it involves humans who are programmed to like the status quo. Businesses underestimate the impact of change management at their peril. However, the tendency is to focus on project management delivery, st...

Selling the enterprise-wide benefits of ITIL and Programme and Project Management (PPM) to businesses and other complex organizations should be the daily bread for anyone making a living in global best practice training. Selling the enterprise-wide benefits of ITIL and Progr...

When embarking on any project, the hardest part is knowing where to begin. But as the Guiding Principles of ITIL Practitioner recommend, my view is that you should start where you are. I recently put these principles into practice when completing a strategic review of our I...

1. In your service management experience, how much of a foundation does ITIL provide? ITIL ® provides a deep foundation when it comes to IT Service Management. One of the reasons is because ITIL is a framework. It is a set of best practices that focuses on aligning IT s...

"How can we be sure if our programmes and projects are delivering successful results? What's the best way of pinpointing our strengths and weaknesses?" Maturity is about recognizing the strengths and weaknesses in an organization’s existing portfolio, programmes and proje...

Ed Lively is a senior consultant and senior trainer at the International Institute for Learning, an AXELOS Accredited Training Organization (ATO) headquartered in New York. Ed attended a free AXELOS PRINCE2 'Train the Trainer' session in January 2015 in Chicago where he unde...

Being able to break through jargon is vital for effective communication, particularly when dealing with people who have little or no technical background. This is particularly true in change management where a breakdown in communication can potentially lead to failure in any ...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Mauricio presented a session on Main challenges at Service Strategy . Watch the video and read his new blog post also discussing the importance of Service Strategy for IT teams and how ITIL Practitioner provides the tools an...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Bjorn presented a session on ITIL Practitioner and Strategic Roles . Watch the video and read his new blog post also discussing how ITIL Practitioner can be applied to a number of key IT Service Management (ITSM) roles. ...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Barry presented a session on Role Challenges and Training Benefits, which covered the benefits offered by ITIL Practitioner. Watch the video and read his new blog post discussing how the certification and guidance can help ad...

This year AXELOS launched the AXELOS Consulting Partner Programme . The programme allows consulting organizations to enter into an official partnership with AXELOS for the first time. The programme is part of our continuing commitment to ensure all organizations that use our...

As more and more people turn to Agile frameworks over traditional project management methodologies to help enhance project capabilities and deliver outputs, it’s important to highlight that Agile is not a panacea for poor project management. At this point, let's distinguish b...

Improving an organization’s agile capability can take many forms: It can involve training people in product-focused frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban, or project-focused frameworks such as PRINCE2 Agile™ and AgilePM/DSDM. Along with this it can include coaching and men...

Having spent most of my career in delivery, I wanted to share my views on what makes a good  programme management office (PMO) . It's no secret that, at times, the programme manager and the PMO don't always see eye to eye, so I wanted to explain some of the system dynamics...

In early December 2016, Kaimar Karu and I found ourselves in Portland, Oregon running a workshop with Jon Terry, Shane Carlson, and Kevin Behr. Over dinner one night, we started talking about Enterprise Service Management (ESM). Differences in opinion started to surface, and ...

Let’s begin by defining the senior responsible owner`(SRO) role. The publication Managing Successful Programmes ® (2011 edition) describes the SRO as the individual responsible for ensuring that a project or programme of change meets its objectives and delivers the projec...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Michael presented a session on Small scale ITSM implementation and ITIL Practitioner . Watch the video and read his new blog post also discussing this topic. How do you apply a large, comprehensive framework like ITIL ®...

Project teams are increasingly becoming virtual in one form or another. This can include working across different geographies, time zones, firm-wide boundaries and with third parties. Projects can cover a number of different countries with virtual teams and as Project Manag...

Why should professionals who have any level of responsibility for projects in their organizations look to approaches like PRINCE2 ® and others for help? Paul Bradley, MD of SPOCE Project Management, shares his view: Many people are involved in project management wit...

There is an important question for project and programme professionals in 2018: now that you’ve passed your test, how are you learning to drive? By this I mean that, presently, colleagues who have passed their best practice foundation and practitioner examinations are not ...

Every day, CIOs face the same daunting question; how can they effectively communicate the value of IT to the business? For any IT initiative, the confusion lies in identifying and quantifying its outcomes for the business. They need to challenge the business’ perception of ...

The value of programme and project assurance can be described as the process of checking that a programme or project makes the right commitments to the business and then delivers on those commitments. Assurance provides an  independent, confidential, objective view  of progra...

Agile delivery principles are increasingly attracting the attention of organizations looking for the most appropriate approach to help meet their project objectives. But, buyer beware! Agile methods alone may not supply sufficient control within projects to ensure they are ...

Over the past 30 years numerous methods, practices, and certifications gained prominence across the global IT community. As the numbers grew, so too did the tendency to promote specific practices and methodologies at the expense of other legitimate and relevant ones as all of...

Adopting service governance is a major change to the way a company organizes itself. Traditionally, directors are presented with reports by departments or via the general ledger which makes it difficult to translate this mass of financial information to arrive at a clear, e...

Delivering the right thing, in the right way and at the right time to ensure maximum return on investment isn’t easy. However, by ‘adjusting the controls’ within the principles and themes of PRINCE2® we have found a more responsive, agile, way of working that’s delivering si...

P3M3® v3.0 is – in the world of best practice guidance – the “big one”. This latest version, the newest since 2008, will provide PPM consultants and organizations they work with the evidence for whether projects, programmes and portfolios are working or not and their return ...

1. The evolution of ITIL ITIL Practitioner is the last, missing piece of the jigsaw – it’s the qualification that will equip IT Service Management (ITSM) practitioners with the answers to the questions they’ve been asking: Where do I start? How do I identify the business’...

It was the marriage they said could never happen but AXELOS has managed it. What were thought to be two polar opposites, PRINCE2 - symbolizing control, accountability, order – and agile – symbolizing self-organization and equality, have been reconciled in the new PRINCE2 Ag...

Why is IT Service Management (ITSM) important to organizations? Executives, of course, want to measure systems, data and people and how the IT infrastructure and the provided services are helping end-users to accomplish their business goal more efficiently. In the past, onl...

One element of PRINCE2 ® that I use on every project I’m involved with is product-based planning. This PRINCE2 technique is especially useful for putting a plan together which comprises the “shopping list” of the things that my project team needs to create to deliver...

In today’s world, you would be hard pressed to find a business that doesn’t use IT. And where there’s IT, there’s IT Service Management (ITSM). When taking my ITIL ® classes, I met people from all walks of life who wanted to learn about ITIL: people from government cont...

How agile is project management in 2017? Our latest PPM Benchmark Study suggests a discrepancy between project managers and the organizations they work for in the way agile is perceived and adopted. The majority of project managers continue to be enthusiastic about agil...

1. In your service management experience, how much of a foundation does ITIL ® provide? One of the benefits of ITIL as a foundation is that it has created a common language across organizations, by establishing both basic terminology and the processes they define. It also...

What you should do to improve project success and achieve value has been high on the agenda this year. Equally, the increased uncertainty in the economy has raised awareness of the need for increased professionalism in project and programme management (PPM) . In short, we’v...

If ever there was a time to deliver efficient and consistent business change in an organization it is now, particularly with ever-increasing budgetary pressures to do more with less. What the Portfolio, Programme and Project Office (P3O ® ) guidance provides is a decision e...

Organizations are going through a period of constant change in how they do things and having to leave behind the mindset of “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. As ITIL ® says, it’s a matter of focusing on customers and what they want. From an IT service management (IT...

To my mind, one of the most useful additions to ITIL ® Practitioner is the Guiding Principles (GP). The Guiding Principles help focus on the essential aspects for a successful ITIL adoption. They provide a powerful checklist to those responsible for ensuring an ITIL deploy...

Project management in North America has a long way to go to fulfil its potential. This is partly because there are many notions about what project management is and partly because a proportion of people involved in project management are giving their abilities more credit th...

The "S" factor - sponsors and stakeholders - are critical to the success of any project or programme. And ensuring these vital people are actively supporting you and your team depends on how successful you are at "managing upwards". People tend to "buy into" programmes as t...

QUESTION: I’ve gained the initial ITIL® qualification but I don’t understand what further training and development can do for me. Isn’t the ITIL foundation enough? Individual practitioners often see the ITIL foundation qualification as a way onto the ladder because busin...

A perfect storm of circumstances in UK public sector project management is helping open the door to agile methods. First, some projects have not been as successful as expected - either not delivering a product or not meeting stakeholder expectations. Combining those issues w...

Why, in project management, are small projects treated as the “poor relation”? Many Project Managers aspire to manage large projects and programmes – large, transformation activities with high visibility, significant resources and a lot of kudos! As such, an aspirational Pr...

Janek Rozov, Head of the Information Society Services Development Department at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in Estonia, explains how it has introduced a multiple-view service catalogue to improve understanding of services amongst its citizens and allo...

How can organizations and their programme managers ensure agile approaches and programme management work well together in 2017? This is a hot topic right now, with a rapidly-evolving technology landscape which lends itself to agile techniques and the pressure on organizatio...

The importance of effective communication with a project’s stakeholders is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. PRINCE2 ® describes detailed techniques only when related to one of its recommended approaches or one that is unique to its method. As a result, it does no...

Agile  is fast becoming the ‘must-have’ methodology requested by many operations directors… something that may be more the result of an impulse purchase in an airport waiting lounge bookshop than coming from a deep understanding of the topic. That said, I must admit that le...

"How do I hold on to my current ITSM budget or even grow it? I know I need to show value to the business, but my concern is that the 'powers that be' see only cost. What's my best approach to this?" As technology continues to advance and develop, IT is becoming even more i...

PRINCE2 Agile is the vital next step in project management; not because PRINCE2® wasn’t already agile which, in my opinion, it was, but more because the agile movement has grown rapidly. The agile arena has simply developed so dramatically that it’s now become essential for s...

At a time in the global job economy when employers report receiving upwards of 30 applications for every job posted, it is more essential than ever to put in the work of earning - and maintaining - professional certifications and skills that will set you apart. Equally import...

Within my own organization, we’ve used the principles of ITIL ® Practitioner to ensure we’re working more effectively. And that has involved taking a “helicopter ride”. The release and deployment team’s objective is to release about 20 new and quality courseware titles to...

PRINCE2 ® is widely recognized for providing a method for successful project delivery. However, aspiring project managers need to consider their certification – any certification – as only part of the greater whole which provides an experienced and well-rounded pro...

As a PRINCE2 ® -qualified project manager, I’ve tailored every project I’ve ever worked on. That’s why it’s great to see that the principle of tailoring runs explicitly throughout the updated PRINCE2 guidance and how it can be tailored for projects in any environment: smal...

2017 was certainly an interesting year for project management and 2018 looks set to be equally eventful. In a positive move for the industry, the Association for Project Management (APM) received its Royal Charter . This is a major step forward for the profession and tak...

In today’s world of digital transformation and disruption, organizations are in a constant state of change. Those that respond well will flourish, but building this capability effectively requires much more than a generic understanding. Tech giants Google, Apple and Micro...

Are you a person who wants to get things done and be successful but lacks the time to make big changes or to start anything complex and new? Based on PRINCE2 ® processes, though taking a more lightweight approach, we have created a brief, practical guidance paper using...

How agile are we in IT service management (ITSM)? I’ve seen numerous different companies claiming to be agile while – in reality – they’re not. If we refer for a moment to the ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI) model, the first step is to define the vision and prop...

We have often discussed how technology and new frameworks have changed our service management practices and how we need to adopt and adapt them. Still as we know there is another key pillar: People. People are often the last step in any improvement plan. Trainings are the f...

With Day 2 of Agile 2018 come and gone, as promised here are my top thoughts from the day. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’d highly recommend my recap of the first day . Today has had a common theme running throughout (bar one exception) of how to scale agi...

It may seem at odds with purist Agile thinking, but project managers are increasingly finding themselves allocated Agile projects. This trend is partly because Agile projects have become the norm rather than the exception in a number of disciplines, such as IT, where digit...

I was working with a client recently, helping them plan ways to improve the management of IT user support. When I came to review the advice I offered them, I realized that other organizations might find the same advice useful, so I have created three blog posts highlighting ...

PRINCE2 terminology can be a real bugbear for agile practitioners; they see it as being too prescriptive and inflexible. However, there are many PRINCE2 terms that reflect agile approaches. Here, we provide one example from each of the five PRINCE2 elements: 1.  Initiation:...

Many individuals, and even organizations, are convinced that there is real value in the guidance documented in ITIL® , but they struggle to know how to use that guidance to best advantage. ITIL describes a lot of best practices that could be followed, but as the saying go...

Within every organization processes change, new technology is brought in, new policies are implemented and organizational structure can change too. IT Service Management (ITSM) initiatives often involve changing how people carry out their jobs and if you’re changing the way...

With the launch of AXELOS’ Professional Development Programme , we have updated one of our previous blogs on our Career Paths tool, which we designed to help you identify the professional skills needed to progress in some of the main job areas in today’s marketplace. You ...

Over the last year and a bit, our team has been lucky to have had the opportunity to meet with and speak to the wonderful ITSM community worldwide to understand how ITIL is being used to deliver value with IT Service Management (ITSM). A lot of this is captured in the AXELOS ...

While Scrum has become the standard for agile software product development, many Scrum users are demanding a kind of umbrella for managing more complex projects where more than one team is involved. Similarly, many “well-established” Project Managers would like to know the ...

The new P3M3 v3.0 best practice guidance solves a number of issues present in its previous incarnations. Most importantly, it greatly enhances the quality of advice organizations can obtain to help them improve their project, programme and portfolio maturity. As co-author o...

If your organization doesn’t change it will probably do one thing: atrophy. It’s not sustainable to remain the same - do that, and you’re writing your own obituary. Like it or not, change happens. The world, people and technology change and organizations need to maintain th...

It is only a month since the launch of PRINCE2 Agile and all of the hard work put in over the last year has turned to relief and excitement. A bit like cyclist Chris Froome going up Alpe d’Huez the other day in the Tour de France – it may be hard work during the ascent, ...

It is often supposed that agile and PRINCE2® conflict directly with each other and cannot be used effectively together. The basis of this view is that PRINCE2 is ‘process-heavy’, while agile is ‘process-light’; in reality, both processes are highly configurable and PRINC...

Continual service improvement (CSI) is integral to the ITIL® framework and should be fundamental for any IT Service management (ITSM) strategy. After all many of us are constantly looking to innovate, improve our business model, reduce costs, risks and improve the overall v...

Why do you want or need a project and programme management (PPM) qualification? Ultimately the reason should be to achieve successful management of projects, programmes and portfolios. However, people often get pushed into getting a qualification for the wrong reasons. If t...

Does your organization have a problem with delivering projects and are you wrestling with the question: “how do we start to improve our projects?” It might seem like a simple question but the answer is more complex. This is because there is no universal right answer, as dif...

The principal objective for a project – delivering a specific output – can often be relegated to a focus on standardization. And very often this standardization of the project management processes boils down to completing a set of project templates. I’ve seen this happen very...

As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit , Simone presented a session on Creative Solutions and Energetic Contributions . Watch the video below and read her new blog post which also discusses the importance of collaboration and stakeholder management and how ITIL P...

Nicola Reeves, Service Management Consultant at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, describes the value ITIL ® Practitioner brings to organizations, especially when it comes to change management. Having completed my ITIL training to the highest level, I was keen to understand...

Any discussion of project management in the USA demands the question: “how well are we doing?” I’d like to say that Project Managers are doing a good job in delivering projects on time and within budget along with all the scope and quality the customer expects. However, th...

In the past 30 years the Northern Ireland Civil Service has seen an increased focus on delivering change and less on “business as usual” activity. This demand for improved public services has changed the way these services are delivered and that requires a much more robust a...

Configuration management is an area often underestimated by businesses. As the animation shows, creating a configuration management database (CMDB) isn’t necessarily that difficult but actually using it correctly within an organization is. This is because configuration man...

Louise John shares her thoughts on why ITIL doesn’t require lots of people and how businesses of all shapes and sizes can use the framework effectively. Does ITIL require a lot of people to work effectively and do you need to have one individual for every role, process ...

Project management learning is influenced increasingly by the importance of engagement . Tenets of engagement such as trust, relationships, communication and collaboration are all part of the behavioural and contextual competencies emerging in project management. Vodafone...

Using AXELOS’ best practice for programme management - MSP (Managing Successful Programmes) - can come in useful in the most unexpected situations - even beyond the workplace. Several years ago, I became involved in a local parents’ campaign about the lack of secondary ...

Many IT departments struggle when trying to adopt Kanban, especially at first. Whether they are moving from an established but ad hoc work management structure, or from a more standardized traditional IT Service Management (ITSM) work management model, they often find it hard...

What does the world want to know about agile delivery methods and their place in PRINCE2 Agile best practice? One of the easiest ways to find out is to ask the world using that most instant of communications tools, Twitter. And so AXELOS – including Allan Thomson, our...

If your key stakeholders and end users aren’t happy, nobody’s happy. Key stakeholders can make or break the success of a project, even if all the deliverables are met and the objectives are satisfied . I was thinking recently about what added value I bring to the success ...

Herding Cats with PRINCE2 ® Let me introduce myself - I’m Tom, a Project Manager. I recently started in my new role and my team are… well, they are a little hairier than I first expected. And when the job description said strong stakeholder management, I didn’t realize this...

30 years ago in the manufacturing industry, if you brought out a new product you may have had between three and nine months before your main competitors would catch on and create something to challenge you. Now, in a digitally-led market, you can often count your time of exc...

Periodically we can all start to feel under-valued for what we do. Whether it be getting the credit and recognition we want for our work or just a few more pounds and pennies a month in our pay packages, it is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to want. That said, aski...

In this second of a two-part blog post series based on AXELOS’ recent research, The Future Project Manager , consultant trainers Duncan Wade and David Hinde explore agile in project management and how it aligns with a strategic approach: While the term “agile” is becom...

AXELOS’ Future ITSM Professional report predicts a growing need for people working in ITSM to adopt a more strategic role as service management principles spread beyond IT and throughout organizations. Service management consultant, Lisa Hodges, reflects on the findings: ...

According to the recent AXELOS PPM Benchmark study , nearly half of project managers who rarely or never conduct project reviews have experienced project failure in the past 12 months – this compares to only 34% of those who review either always or most of the time. Thes...

How can you use ITIL ® to address real business problems and add value while bringing along people who might be resistant to change? Progressing iteratively means that changes (in effect, smaller changes) are easier for people to stomach and you’ll get a better level o...

The ITIL ® update recently announced by AXELOS will be guided by the Lead Architect Team, comprising highly-respected experts from around the world. In this first blog post from the team, Troy DuMoulin talks IT past and present along with what an updated ITIL will mean f...

In 2017, people working in IT service management (ITSM) have shown a real openness to change and new ideas. There has always been a discussion that “a change is needed” in the ITSM world. Still a lot of initiatives have started and died unnoticed, or after a ton of negative...

We know that security awareness training for all is an essential part of our organizational resilience to the growing risk from, and impact of, cyber-attacks . However, we see common and typical weaknesses in learning programmes: Overestimating the extent to which the t...

If I asked you to carve out five hours a week for learning your immediate response might be ‘nice idea but I don’t have the time’. It would certainly be my reaction. But what if I told you that some of the world’s most successful leaders regularly take time out of their day ...

I’m a big believer that projects are a product of the people who are involved in them. Of course, an agile framework and clearly defined measures of control are essential but, based on my experience, people have to enjoy what they’re doing and want to work together to ac...

With system breaches at universities doubling over the past two years, cyber-resilience is an increasing concern. In the first of two blog posts Kuldip Sandhu, Higher and Further Education Consultant, Innovative Quality Solutions looks at the challenges and considers soluti...

Organizational transformation is built on ITIL ® best practices. And, from what I’ve seen from the frontline, the need for this still exists. In fact, there is so much work still to be accomplished among organizations that I could be busy for years and years! As a consul...

IT Infrastructure management and support domain are experiencing a new makeover when it comes to tools, technologies, and methods that are being introduced on top of the service layer. Support and service are an integral part of every business. Every organization is an IT org...

Incident Managers are crucial to IT service operations in any organization. When something goes wrong, they provide immediate support, commanding and controlling major incidents. A successful Incident Manager needs to be proactive and a real people person. But what other sk...

What have all the successful teams throughout history had in common? The England Football Team 1966, Apollo 11 astronauts or Sir Edmund Hillary’s Mount Everest expedition team were all made up of individuals with different skills and experiences working towards a common goa...

Project managers - by their very nature - generally don't start a new project without an underlying belief that their project will be a success. However, what should sit alongside this optimism at the outset of a project is an equal dose of realism and a willingness to ask c...

Background Hopefully you will all have seen the research that AXELOS recently published around the perception of ITIL in the current market. If you haven't had a chance to see it yet, you can download it from the box to the right of this page. The research has been well rec...

Craig Kilford (@MrPortfolio) co-authored AXELOS’ global standard for portfolio management - Management of Portfolios (MoP®) and is currently writing an AXELOS white paper that will be the first to officially compare MoP with PMI’s* Standard for Portfolio Management. In this...

What are the ITIL training questions that a tutor hears from trainees time and again? As a useful resource for all practitioners, I felt it was worth bringing the “usual suspects” of topics together in one place: What is an accreditor, an ATO and EI? AXELOS is the accredi...

More and more organizations are finding a need for their employees to have project management knowledge because the work people do is increasingly project-based. Not only that, but as the world becomes more complex and advances in technology are made every day, project acti...

Behaviour is a critical success factor in any organization and yet – traditionally – many frameworks such as ITIL ® , SCRUM or LEAN, fail to address behaviour change. The issue is that many senior leaders and managers use negative consequences to encourage the desired b...

The scenario animation below shows how a company was able to reduce costs and calls to its service desk by applying the ITIL Practitioner Guiding Principle of Design for Experience. Watch the animation and read the accompanying blog from ITIL Practitioner Architect Team Membe...

I started in IT back in the pre-Internet ‘dark ages’, over 35 years ago. In those days we were literally in the basement and nobody really knew what we did, we were the geeks of ‘IT Crowd’ cliché. When there was a major system outage it could take us down for hours, but the ...

The internet plays a huge part in our lives: for work, staying in touch with our friends, shopping, playing games, studying or just watching some hilarious cat videos, we are spending more and more time online. We are bombarded with more and more information and the technol...

Taking the MSP ® (Managing Successful Programmes) Practitioner exam puts you on a pathway to a proven best practice method for managing transformational change in organizations. Programmes are the delivery mechanism for this level of change, defining an organization’s f...

I received the Project Mandate in October 2016.  It was clear and concise. “Run the Bournemouth Half Marathon on 8 October 2017 and raise awareness and funds for Target Ovarian Cancer ” . Starting Up A Project process was triggered and I created the Project Brief. Th...

When summing up project management in 2017, one word dominates: convergence. Convergence has been happening for a while and is founded on having a common understanding of project management and its underlying concepts. For example, if everyone involved in the project shar...

In the international bestseller The 7 habits of highly effective people (Free Press, 1988), Steven R. Covey describes an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls the ‘true north’ principles of a character ethic that are universal...

Marcel Foederer was among a number of trainers and consultants who undertook the recent ITIL ® Practitioner “Trainer Readiness Session” course. In this first blog post from those trainers, he considers the value of the new ITIL Practitioner certification: Among t...

Do you have what it takes to be a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) ? What does a BRM do? The role is responsible for building relationships between the IT organization and the business units to ensure IT services meet the needs of business customers. BRMs collaborate...

PRINCE2 is one of the world’s most popular project management methodologies, so congratulations if you’re studying to take the Foundation exam; having the PRINCE2 certification will prepare you well for job roles both within and outside the world of project management. But b...

If you’re intending to take the Practitioner qualification, a little groundwork while studying for the Foundation exam will pay dividends later on. The Manual The Practitioner exam is open book, meaning you can consult the manual during the exam. The only book you can take ...

Okay, I don’t usually quote Shakespeare, but there’s one line that I’ve remembered since I was at school in England. It comes from Othello : “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself.” All the publicity aro...

Configuration Management requires a disciplined approach to be functional. It’s about having a record of your systems, what’s happened to those items and the details of the relationships between the items on your list. It’s commonly used in IT, military or commercial aviatio...

According to AXELOS’ Future Project Management Professional research, the project managers of tomorrow will need to embrace a wider range of skills and become even more multi-faceted. Project manager, Ana Bertacchini considers the implications for the profession. How wil...

The focus on tailoring in the PRINCE2 ® 2017 Update is about taking only what you and your project need to ensure the right approaches are in place for success. This idea of cutting the best practice guidance down to the size you require is a crucial and useful change to...

It is very common for organizations to ask project managers to deliver a plan for approval at short notice and this increases the risks for its delivery. What is rarely recognized is that a hastily-produced plan risks being incomplete, leading to delays, quality compromise...

Improving IT Service Management in 2015 For me the main issue with improving ITSM is that we often spend too much time contemplating our own navel instead of making things happen! As an industry we are very good at theorizing and discussing ideas both old and new, but makin...

In IT and ITSM, we’re living in the age of change – and that change is accelerating. If the birth of the internet was the start of this new age, we’ve now entered the next evolutionary stage: that includes a combination of cloud computing, mobility, big data analytics, ro...

Being “match-fit” for any examination takes plenty of advanced planning and preparation. By the time you’re taking your PRINCE2 ® 2009 Foundation exams, you should already be a veteran of exam techniques from experience at school, college and university. But even if you...

Project management and IT Service Management (ITSM) are evolving and, as a result, are becoming more interlinked. The reason for their entwinement is simple: it’s part of a move from ‘traditional’ project management approaches that focus on producing a deliverable to a more...

What is the current state of project management and Project Managers? At the turn of 2016, PM Perspectives Blog - in its top 10 project management trends post - said: “Project management is no longer boxed away in a corner of the room. It stands front and centre and is b...

PRINCE2 gives you a structured approach to delivering something , regardless of what that something is. And it’s effective not only for professionals with “Project Manager” in their job title: according to AXELOS’ PPM Survey 2016 , 88% of IT professionals, 82% of senio...

A lot of organizations, like the one featured in this animation, experience frustration with their service desk. While that’s not a criticism – the majority get things done quickly – end users get annoyed by the speed of service desk support. Interestingly, what’s usually at...

Hitesh Patel demystifies the role and qualities of the Service Delivery Manager and where ITIL® Practitioner’s best practice guidance can support their work: Service Delivery Manager (SDM) is a role many people struggle with within IT Service Management (ITSM) and, for...

How do you start a project using the PRINCE2 ® project management method? Mark Sutton, change manager and trainer, considers the steps: Starting up a project – according to PRINCE2 – is triggered by a mandate : a reason to do something or, in other words, a busin...

The quick-to-market digital environment of today means organizations have to find a way to incorporate agile working in what they do. Take-up of agile remains a mixed bag and we should acknowledge that agile isn’t for everyone or everything. However, where the feeling t...

A well-designed project and stage plan was once the pride of any successful project manager. In the post-waterfall era of agile everything, the humble project and stage plan has got itself a bit of a bad reputation for being excessive. However, effective project management st...

My AXELOS, the new content subscription service from AXELOS, includes access to digital badges for ITIL ® , PRINCE2 ® and MSP ® certifications plus CPD in each area of knowledge. But why is investing in digital badges an important part of demonstrating your credibili...

Organizations today are struggling to stay responsive and effective in the face of constant change. Most are struggling just to catch up with, let alone get in front of, the accelerating turbulence that seems to infect every industry being impacted by ‘macro disruption’: A te...

I was working with a client recently, helping them plan ways to improve the management of IT user support. When I came to review the advice I offered them, I realized that other organizations might find the same advice useful, so I have created three blog posts highlighting ...

Throughout the 25 years of its existence, ITIL has supported IT organizations in providing business value for their customers in the form of well-designed and supported services. ITIL has become the most widely used and most successful ITSM (IT Service Management) framework i...

There are, as you may know, a few key differences between agile and traditional waterfall projects, when managed using PRINCE2® . Traditional waterfall projects are delivered sequentially, whereas agile projects tend to be iterative and incremental. Traditional project p...

What is the impact of mobility for the enterprise and the IT people tasked with supporting it? Like it or not, mobility is a hard trend – one that is not going away anytime soon – and its impact is significant. There is a projected exponential increase in mobile usage and c...

How true to life are the so-called projects being managed by the so-called Project Manager on The Apprentice? What problems do they encounter and how do they deal with them? How should they be dealt with and how would the PRINCE2 Agile ® guidance handle things? The seri...

Programme managers juggle a wide range of challenges and many will get a buzz from bringing order to chaos and under-performance. All will want to avoid the pitfalls of change. Here are five change mistakes that a good programme manager will avoid in situations the really e...