Quotes from Robert D. Austin

Good CIOs are hard to find. Even if you can find one, it may take as much as a year for a CIO new to the company to learn the company environment and become an effective leader.

Oh, I see. I think. I don't have to actually know things I don't know, I just have to know what they are and realize that they're in the don't-know category." The kid drained the last of a mug of Coke and slammed it down hard on the bar. "That's it!

Oh, I see. I think. I don't have to actually know things I don't know, I just have to know what they are and realize that they're in the don't-know category." The kid drained the last of a mug of Coke and slammed it down hard on the bar. "That's it!" Despite himself, Barton felt proud. He took

There are widely cited accounts of famous but unnamed Soviet boot and nail factories. The boot factories produced only size-7-left boots but never missed a production quota; the nail factories made a large number of small nails in response to numerical targets but switched skillfully to a small number of very large nails when targets were set by weight.

So the best project management policies are those that promote open flow of information up and down the project hierarchy.

He knew that some believed that standardization would impede innovation; that was one of the arguments people who resisted standardization were most inclined to make. But Barton was not so sure of that.

Assigning best people to the project ("If they're easy to give up, they're the wrong people.")

Iterative, adaptive approach that recognized the importance of developing prototypes or else manually walking through how the system would work in great detail, to discover problems that could not be foreseen any other way, and to make midcourse adjustments