Project Risks

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture to some second year university students here in Melbourne. The talk was titled “e-Business In The Real World” but really it was me yabbering on about my experiences delivering software. Anyway, a couple of people have asked me to publish the slides so [here they are](/blog/archives/RMIT eBusiness Lecture.pdf), all done using NeoOffice/J on my brand spanking new PowerBook. They’re not much, nothing fancy, but they really summarise the risks associated with delivering software.

If I could sum it all up I would say that if your problems are largely imposed by entities external to The Team then that’s about normal; you just have to identify the risks and mitigate them somehow. If, on the otherhand, your major problems are technical, i.e. within The Team, you’re in deep doggie doodoo; fire them all and start again ;-P

UPDATE: Having been asked to present again, I revised the slides slightly using Keynote. The content may be much the same (a few changes here and there) but it sure does look sexier now ;-). Unfortunately keynote produces an enormous PDF so, I actually exporpted to PPT then imported into NeoOffice/J and re-exported to PDF producing a file that is less than 10% the size!