It has been said that almost 80% of all IT projects go over schedule and budget. That's huge. And since I build web software for a living, I've had my share of mistakes. But fortunately, I learned early on that superior project management can significantly curtail delays and rising costs thus increasing the chances of a client leaving happy. Over the past two years, Griffio has completed 92% of its projects on time and 84% under budget. I'm very proud of that result and hope the trend continues as I learn knew ways of speeding up the development process through better communication. So why do most IT projects fail? Information Week writes: "Technology projects very seldom fail for technology reasons. By far the highest percentage of failures results from human communication issues." In short, good project management is a must. And good project management is all about managing both client and developer expectations. For example, what specifically is included in an engagement, and more importantly, what's not. Have an open door policy and don't be afraid to lay your feelings out on the table when problems arise (and they will). Project management isn't rocket science. It's just good ole fashion accountability using delivery milestones, progress updates, and honesty up front when things aren't going as planned.

Steve Jobs posted an excellent article today backing a DRM-less music file for the masses. That means you play the file when you want and where you want independent of music players. Even iPods. From Jobs's callout to the big four record companies: "If [DRM] were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies... Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly." UPDATE: iTunes currently protects songs that are already DMR-less at emusic.com. Not to side with the big record lables, but perhaps Steve is up to something else. More here.

This year, I've been invited to serve as a judge for the Stoel Rives Innovation Awards. The following is taken from the Stoel Rives site:

Entry Deadline

Entries can be submitted beginning Thursday, January 11, 2007. The official entry deadline is February 23, 2007.

Entry Categories

Innovations in the following seven areas are recognized in the Utah Innovation Awards:

• Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals
• Chemicals/Materials Science
• Computer Hardware/Electrical Devices
• Consumer Software and Web Services
• Enterprise Software and Web-Enabled B2B Solutions
• Mechanical Devices
• Medical Devices

Judging  A Selection Committee comprised of approximately 50 professionals from Utah's business, technology and academic communities, all with technical experience pertaining to one of the program's seven categories, will carefully review the nominations during a three-week evaluation process. During this process, each Selection Committee member will also review nominations in a Subcommittee pertaining to his/her area of expertise. In the event that conflicts exist between Selection Committee members and nominations, members will provide full disclosure to the rest of the committee. Following the evaluation process, each Selection Committee member will vote on ALL nominations submitted in EACH category. The three nominations receiving the largest number of votes, will be named as finalists in each category.

WordPress just released version 2.1. The already stellar CMS/Blog software just got a whole lot better right out of the box. From the release: "You can [now] set any "page"” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system." We baked this feature into our custom WP installs last year for several clients, but it's nice to see this support out of the box. Also included is an autosave feature, a better default spell checker, more AJAX for quicker updates, and better overall performance. Oh, and it's named Ella after the great Ella Fitzgerald. At last. Hit me up if your interested in a custom upgrade, and/or if you'd like to see just how far custom development can enhance your WP install as a better CMS.< /sales pitch>