Grant Buckler

Wondering how the rest of the organization views the work of the IT department? Well, as the saying goes, all you have to do is ask.

Ten seconds to midnight, December 31, 1999. Megacorp's brightly lit computer centre hums with the sound of servers. The sprawling room is festooned with a few cheesy garlands left over from the company Christmas party and a couple of dozen limply floating balloons. Gathered round a desk in the middle of the room are a few unfortunate employees who have pulled skeleton crew duty. Henderson has smuggled in a bottle of bubbly, the contents of which have been more or less evenly distributed in eight raised glasses. Everyone's eyes are glued to a computer on the desk, logged onto a millennium Web site showing a clock ticking out the last few strokes to the dreaded year 2000. Everyone prepares to celebrate

How times have changed for consultants. Once the Don Juans of the IT world, they briefly courted their prospective partners, performed whatever service was required of them, secured their fee, and just as quickly flitted off in search of their next conquest. Now they must be the Faithful Freddies, prepared to step up to the alter and commit to a long-term relationship, for better or for worse, and -- heaven forbid -- for richer or for poorer. That

When it comes to making beautiful music together, clients and outsourcers more often sound like tuneless high-school bands than well-rehearsed orchestras. But with a good conductor in charge, the music can sound a whole lot sweeter.

Large IT projects have a notoriously high failure rate, and more often than not the reasons for...

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The recent holiday season was an electronic-commerce milestone in Canada. For the first time, Canadians were offered...

Methodical souls that CIOs are, they love to have a plan. But what good is a plan if it