Stories about: PA Consulting Group

On par with a trip to the dentist's office, IT budgeting tends to rank fairly low on any CIO's list of favorite activities. While alternative approaches to forecasting corporate IT expenditures won't necessarily make the process any less tedious or painful, progressive new budgeting practices could make life easier in the long run.

Outsourcing is perceived as the silver bullet of the day, and many companies indeed benefit from it. But the dirty little secret of outsourcing has emerged: Everyone isn't happy.

While e-commerce projects are not all that's going on in your IT department, managing them can be tough. What's needed is a balance between speedy and flexible development cycles, and a framework which ensures all the right boxes are ticked, including: goals, measurable (and appropriate) outcomes, and detailed reporting ( Cover story, page 18).

Balance the skills of inspiring a diverse group of professionals to get the best out of an equally diverse range of technologies, with the vision of the sales and marketing gurus, and the constraints bean counters put on budgets, then funnel all this into delivering the best outcomes for the customer's wishlist - and getting it right at Internet speed is the key to managing projects in today's e-business world. Sue Bushell reports Organisations have increasingly paid tribute to the relationship between IT success and strong project management over recent years but it's clear e-business projects are the proof of the pudding.

Balance the skills of inspiring a diverse group of professionals to get the best out of an equally diverse range of technologies, with the vision of the sales and marketing gurus, and the constraints bean counters put on budgets, then funnel all this into delivering the best outcomes for the customer's wishlist - and getting it right at Internet speed is the key to managing projects in today's e-business world. Sue Bushell reports Organisations have increasingly paid tribute to the relationship between IT success and strong project management over recent years but it's clear e-business projects are the proof of the pudding.