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Personal information is an asset that can create more value for customers, hence people want to share their data with organizations. However, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) says we have to manage their data properly. From 25 May 2018, this applies insi...

Recruitment in the project management market in mid-2018 finds itself in between times: the recessionary economy of post-2008 and an emerging state of recovery. The relatively high availability of people during recessionary periods means employers don’t have to try too har...

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...

As usual, reading an article by Paul Wilkinson , is always a refreshing experience with food for thought. That wasn’t any different when I started reading his AXELOS blog on " the evolution in ITSM part 1 ". However, when reading the following paragraph, I experienced a ‘fu...

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AXELOS has updated the PRINCE2 project management guidance & launched new Foundation & Practitioner exams. They form the PRINCE2 2017 update: find out more.

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...

Can you be both agile and strategic in project management? Based on our recent research, The Future Project Manager , AXELOS invited consultant trainers Duncan Wade and David Hinde to explore the debate in this first part of a two-part blog post series: Project managers...

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 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...

How does an organization instil the required discipline to align portfolios and hold itself to account? Step 1: Business forecast New market opportunities drive strategic change . This means the first step should be to look at what kind of an organization you need to b...

Digital disruption is transforming the way industries operate. But for a successful legacy business with an established infrastructure and corresponding capabilities, introducing change can be a challenge. You begin with the end in mind – and that’s the vision. By that, I d...

What makes some change initiatives bloom while others wither and die? A 2013 study of pilot programmes by the National Academy of Sciences found that few effective pilot programmes remain effective at larger scales. The reasons may lie in both our natural resistance to new...

Having a background in Agile-focused learning, certification and roles for more than 12 years, I previously had less interest in ITIL ® . So, you might wonder why I’m now certified in ITIL 4. I’d had some ITIL training and learning at university and there were elements I...

Release, Control and Validation (RCV) is a module within the Intermediate level of the ITIL certification scheme. Find out more about this module.

Before any discussion about ITIL's "adopt and adapt" approach, it's important that we dispel some ITIL myths. The principal myths state that ITIL is: Useful for large organizations only Bureaucratic Time consuming Non-Agile Prescriptive. Traditionally, ITIL's commun...

Why is IT and - consequently ITSM - under pressures that can pull it in two different directions? Leading research company, Gartner, calls it "bimodal IT" and depicts it as “rocks in a river”: solid IT operational excellence standing against the fast-moving flow of digital. ...

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...

Though a performance analytics and testing company, SOASTA use ITIL ® best practice to consider key processes for any application lifecycles and have applied them to their development methodology. In this blog, Dan discusses a little of what they have learned so far. ...

Managing projects and programmes differs based on the objectives each tends to have. Where project management focuses on one specific element to address a particular business process, programme management not only has a greater monetary value but also a wider range of people...

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 ®...

No matter how sophisticated an organization’s technical controls, there is always a risk of attack. In this day and age, with the great speed at which technology is advancing, the constant evolution of threats makes it impossible for any business to be 100% protected; what th...

The use of managed service providers is relatively common across all sorts of organizations. Unfortunately, what’s also common is ineffective relationships and ways of working between businesses and their provider. Most organizations work with a managed service provider in ...

Having had the opportunity to review the new PRINCE2 ® 2017 (draft) manual, and as someone who sat the first PRINCE2 2017 (trainer only) examinations – what are my impressions? Firstly, it’s still the PRINCE2 we know and love... but better! Let’s start with a little bit...

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...

According to the 2017 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. These ...

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...

Hannah Mason, project manager at Octopus Group, recently studied and certified in the latest versions of PRINCE2 ® Foundation and Practitioner. Here, she talks about the newly-updated certifications and how PRINCE2 helps her day-to-day work. Certifying in PRINCE2 has...

When considering your ability to deliver projects, programmes and manage portfolios, you should always consider things from an organizational perspective first. Sounds obvious, right? Though this thinking is not new, it has been gaining a lot more traction in recent yea...

Services are about people and processes and how technology enables the service delivery. These services need service management and, as a product manager, it has been useful to recognize that designing services is different to designing products. In order to deliver a cons...

Services are about people and processes and how technology enables the service delivery. These services need service management and, as a product manager, it has been useful to recognize that designing services is different to designing products. In order to deliver a cons...

Traditionally, ITSM has not been agile. People have tended to focus more on having robust processes and rather than considering “what do we need?”, they have asked “what more can we put in to processes ?”. This level of “over-control” has happened because of over-enginee...

One of the major challenges for IT is that it still operates in a silo . An organization might understand its strategy, but the IT goals are often not aligned with the strategy; equally, there may not be a holistic view across the business and IT. This needs a mindset s...

How can communication within IT service management (ITSM) – and ultimately with the business it supports – be improved? The silos that can develop among different parts of organizations need something that bridges the gap between the professionals that create and build t...

What are the factors that make a strategic programme work? a question that might have helped the set rebuild project of the BBC’s flagship soap opera in the UK, “EastEnders”. The UK Government’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently published a report into the transform...

ITIL Intermediate’s Service Design (SD) module provides one of the most important approaches to deliver a service that works and enables value creation. Without employing SD and, for example, moving to transition without much design and attention to processes there is a ...

We have recently published the third instalment of our Global PPM Benchmarking series and it makes for compelling reading. The report has been designed to offer market insight into the status of project and programme management highlighting the growing trends and key issues...

Details of the PRINCE2 Agile Certification Scheme and associated Foundation and Practitioner examinations.

“ Elas Projetam ” literally translates as “they (women) make projects” and perfectly encapsulates the focus of this recently-formed, voluntary organization in Brazil. Here, Vanessa Guimarães explains how the initiative aims to connect women working in project management and...

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...

With over 30 years’ experience working in the field of project management training and consultancy, Julia Gosse reflects on the benefits of taking both PRINCE2 ® Foundation and PRINCE2 Practitioner. For anyone connected with projects, PRINCE2 Foundation has merits as a ...

Since good governance is about the processes for making and implementing decisions, then effective governance and accountability structures are vital particularly if organizations are to successfully use an agile approach to deliver business change through the investment of p...

The service level agreement (SLA) model has always existed in the world of IT in some form, as a promise to guarantee a level of service. For a long time, SLAs have offered very traditional approaches to measure what is perceived as quality of service by IT organizations. ...

Setting the scene: ‘…The rolling green hills of England, the buttercups painted a golden yellow by the early morning sun, cows lying in glistening dew cloaked fields, the gentle buzz of a bee in the scent filled breeze... a stark contrast to the high-tech hum of the sterile ...

Senior Project Manager

Programme Manager/Programme Director