BYOD is the buzzword in business IT at the moment, but is there more to it than just easily spouted rhetoric by a few industry influencers?

A study by Gartner would suggest there is. It predicts that 38% of organisations will stop providing mobile devices to employees by 2016 and 50% will mandate a BYOD policy by 2017. That’s a significant enough portion of organisations for IT professionals to stand up and take notice.

So what does this mean for the tech side of businesses? On our ITIL courses, we emphasise the difficulty in managing multiple and diverse platforms from both a support and security perspective, something which BYOD only increases.

With BYOD getting more and more popular, does this mean that the traditional model of internal IT support and service management will have to be entirely scrapped? Or can it adapt to the challenges it faces with BYOD and continue to be the technical bedrock of any business?

Why BYOD Could Spell the end for Internal IT Support

BYOD throws up all sorts of issues for businesses, and in particular, for the IT crew. In the time of blanket company Blackberries and uniform Dell PCs, IT support was in the most part, a lot simpler: if you could fix a problem on one machine, you could probably fix it on any of them.

These days, to be able to provide full IT support to an organisation, you’d need to be an expert in Windows, iOS, Android and maybe even Blackberry OS. People like this don’t exactly grow on trees.

Read the rest of "Mandated BYOD by 2017: Is this the End of Internal Tech Support?"

Posted by Andy Trainer in ITIL, News on May 15th, 2013| No Comments »

Landing your first management role is an exciting and rewarding experience. You’ll have more responsibility, more power and more money. You’ll be given more freedom to act on your own decisions too.

It’s not all a bed of roses though. Management can be a tough and gruelling profession whatever the industry, and one which needs to be fully understood and prepared for in order to succeed.

Coming on our Management Skills for New Managers Course is a great idea and our Leadership Training will get you started on the path to success but I thought I’d reach out to a selection of managers and professionals from a variety of industries, asking them what they think is the biggest challenge they faced in the first few months/year in the job. Hopefully this will help those starting out in management understand the issues they may have to deal with.

First up we have someone who has only been in management for a day (or had when I spoke to her at least)!

Building Relationships and Understanding the Company

Laura Evans, Marketing Manager at Create.net

“Joining a new place is nerve-wracking but Create have been especially welcoming. Having a dedicated internal HR person has been useful here as it meant they were very supportive in checking I have everything I needed.

As a marketing manager it’s a challenge for me to have good connections with everyone I work with across the business, especially heads of customer service departments and the product manager, as well as those I work more directly with.

I bought donuts for everyone on my first day (which went down really well!) but I realise these relationships are something that need to be built up over time and will take long term attention to grow and maintain.

Read the rest of "Biggest Challenges Faced by New Managers"

Posted by Andy Trainer in Management, News on May 9th, 2013| No Comments »

At some point during a career in training you’ll have to train somebody for whom English isn’t a first language. In this situation, it can be difficult to stick to your established learning methods and activities.

On our 2-day Train the Trainer course, we explain in detail how to cater for different levels and learning styles, and teaching non-native English speakers comes under a similar bracket.

With all that in mind, we decided to put together a guide to help you deal with this challenge. So what’s the first you can do to make things easier for you and your delegates?

Limit the Jargon

For someone who has just learnt, is still learning, or who rarely speaks English, technical jargon can be a bit of a stumbling block. Words that have little meaning without deep context can be confusing to native speakers, let alone those with English as a second language.

Read the rest of "Addressing a Language Barrier in Training"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Train the Trainer on May 1st, 2013| No Comments »

We often receive the same questions about our PRINCE2 Training Courses here at Silicon Beach: what’s the difference between the PRINCE2 Foundation Course and the PRINCE2 Practitioner Course.

With that in mind, we though we’d put together a handy table outlining the main differences, as well as our thoughts on the which the sort of people and positions that are best suited to each course.

Hopefully it will make your decision that little bit easier when booking your PRINCE2 Training, although if you’re still struggling to decide, our sales team are always on hand to help!

So what are the main differences?

Read the rest of "Differences Between PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner Qualification"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Project Management on April 24th, 2013| No Comments »

Lean Six Sigma is used by businesses the world over as a means to improve quality and efficiency. Its impact on business cannot be overstated with everyone from Amazon to Vodafone adopting the principles.

What started in the manufacturing industry has since swept through the service, tech and financial sectors. It’s not just for corporate business either: governments and other public organisations have used Lean Six Sigma with enormous success. It’s even been used to control diabetes!

If you’d like to learn more about Six Sigma and how it can help your business, come on our Six Sigma Training.

It is though, somewhat surprising (although not illogical) news to learn that Lean Six Sigma has been used by US crime labs, to streamline and improve their processes.

Lack of Efficiency is a Crime

Last year, Monroe County Crime Lab in New York State was struggling with certain issues; it was:

• Unable to deal with its huge backlog of cases
• Not able to get the work done on each case fast enough
• Producing low quality reports

Something needed to be done and so with those issues at the forefront, from August to September 2012 the crime lab began testing the adoption of Lean Six Sigma principles in regard to its workflow.

Read the rest of "Lean Six Sigma in the Forensics Lab"

Posted by Andy Trainer in Lean Six Sigma, News on April 19th, 2013| 1 Comment »

Much has been said about the usefulness of Social Media within Project Management, but a topic that as yet seems to have been left untouched is how Project Management can help in Social Media Marketing campaigns.

Many of the principles and techniques that we teach in our Project Management Training, as well as on our PRINCE2 Course, can be applied to Social Marketing campaigns in order to improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

In this post we’ll be taking a look at some and how they should be enacted.

Initiating a Project

The ‘Initiating a Project‘ stage of PRINCE2 can certainly be applied to a Social Media campaign. This process effectively outlines the reasons for and initial format of a project.

With regard to a Social Media campaign, it would require an understanding of the goals you hope to achieve by engaging on this platform.

It would also set out the preliminary ideas as to how to go about enacting this, both from a strategic point of view (what sort of things will you post, who are you targeting) and from a logistical perspective (which networks will you use and how much.)

Read the rest of "How to Use Project Management to Run Better Social Media Campaigns"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Project Management, Social Media on April 8th, 2013| 2 Comments »

A skill that is essential to good training, and that is emphasised on our Train the Trainer course, is the ability to ask the right kinds of questions in order to best challenge and get the most from delegates.

Since Socrates’ time, questioning has been taken to be an effective method for all sorts of teaching as it gives the student the opportunity to ruminate and run over information in their mind as they answer.

Questioning is also a very effective way to deal with difficult delegates, when used as part of a broader strategy.

We thought it would be a good idea to explain some of the different varieties of questions that can be used in training with some examples of how they can be used:

Leading Questions

Leading questions are particularly important in training. The idea is to ask a question that has the under-surface intention of bringing someone around to your point of view.

These can be particular useful in a disagreement with a delegate when you know you’re right (although have the potential to backfire if you’re wrong!). Used well and they can be a powerful tool, but used badly and it can make you seem manipulative; so use with care.

Read the rest of "Questions in Training"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Train the Trainer on March 22nd, 2013| No Comments »

Basic planning is essential to the development and growth of any business, but knowing how to plan well is a skill in and of itself. A masterpiece can’t be made without careful consideration of the tools available, the methods to be employed and the end-target.

No one knows this fact more than a project manager upon whose plans rest entire company endeavours, as we explained in our analysis of the PRINCE2 Planning Theme.

There’s a time and a place for spontaneity (ironically) but when it comes to the successful completion of a project, planning is fundamental, which is why it is such a pivotal part of our PRINCE2 Project Management Courses.

So just why is planning so important, especially when project management is concerned? How do you go about it, and within a project, who is responsible for planning what?

Why So Important?

Let’s make it clear – when I’m referring to a plan here, I’m not specifically (or necessarily) referring to a formal document associated with any of the major project management methodologies. Instead, I am referring to the general ‘concept’ of planning but with specific reference to project management.

As such, we’ll take a look at the more formal aspects of planning an actual project but also look at the more general planning that can be applied to both projects and other aspects of life.

Firstly with regards to projects, let’s take a look at why planning is so important for:

Team Members

Psychologically speaking, forward planning makes a huge impact on a worker because it clearly sets out the criteria they must meet in order to be deemed successful. Having that clear set of criteria in mind gives them something to aim toward.

This in turn breeds greater focus and drive and enhances productivity because they are able to see themselves develop step-by-step, identify ‘wins’ and failures and pinpoint their value within a project.

Read the rest of "The Art of Planning a Project"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Project Management on March 5th, 2013| No Comments »