Herman Mehling

Call it a sign of the times: Now even Microsoft — the king of proprietary software — is embracing open source Hadoop. Bottom line: big data makes a compelling case. Hadoop, it seems, is everywhere these days. IBM, Oracle and Yahoo are among the big guns that have been supporting Hadoop for years. Recently, Microsoft […]

Compare Android smartphones like the HTC Thunderbolt, LG Revolution, Motorola Atrix 4G, and the Samsung Vibrant. The chart below (you’ll need to click through) puts their specs side by side. If there was any doubt that 2011 would be the year of 4G smartphones, this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) trashed that doubt with demos […]

Project managers seeking to distinguish themselves in 2011 should hone their leadership skills, and strive to learn more about project management through experience and various informal approaches. Somewhat surprisingly, that’s the advice of J. LeRoy Ward, executive vice president, ESI International, a leading project management learning company. Leadership and learning were the main themes unearthed […]

Purists will tell you a PMP certification boot camp won’t teach you much except how to pass your PMP certification exam. Realists will scoff and say “Isn’t that the whole point of a PMP boot camp — to give you sufficient knowledge to pass a difficult, highly specialized exam?!?” Clearly, spending four of five days […]

Would you prefer to be called a “project manager” or a “project leader”? Most of us would probably prefer the latter simply because it makes us sounds more important, regardless of whether we actually have the innate skills to lead others. For some, the titles are virtually synonymous if not meaningless as each successful project […]

If you need a refresher course on project management or just some help to keep you at the top of your game, here are some tips that should add an edge to your expertise. To compile the list and flesh it out with in-the-field wisdom, I spoke with Mike Taylor, president, Innovative-e, a SharePoint consulting […]

Using Microsoft’s SharePoint server to create a project management information system (PMIS) can be a great way for a project manager to wrest control of projects from the IT department, while simplifying tasks, and providing a central repository for all project-related documents. “SharePoint for PM is great for small, lightweight projects that last a few […]

Server virtualization is obviously great business for virtualization software vendors, but the surprise is that it’s been even better business for data storage vendors, as organizations are spending tons of money to store and back up all their virtual machines. Server virtualization is the key technology that will shape the future of the data storage […]

                While project managers everywhere know that Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful and effective platform for doing project management, not all users of the technology know it has inherent and situational disadvantages. At least, that’s the shared opinion of Eamonn McGuinness, CEO, BrightWork, a provider of SharePoint applications […]

As an IT project manager, you live closer than you’d like to the edge of insanity. Your world is dominated by impossible deadlines, constant delays, predictable C-level involvement (a.k.a., top-down interference), endless hardware and software challenges, and―let’s not forget that old favorite―poor communications. Having a great communications plan for each project can help you achieve […]