Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

The course of conflict is not determined by the person who initiates but by the person who responds. Said by Duncan, in the third episode, "Silent Symphony" of the first season of the Amazon series "Mozart in the Jungle" and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Expert judgment is typically the crux of cost and schedule estimates but in the spectrum of the risk management process, quantification of expert judgment is the weakest area - Fred Raymond, Acquistion Review Quarterly - Spring 199., pp. 147-154 Making... Read more →

The Integrated Master Plan Defines what Done Looks Like

My colleague, Pat Barker, is an instructor at the Defense Acquisition University. Pat has produced Parctical Advice for Integrated Master Plans. Click on the image below to get started. The resources there will guide you through the development and use... Read more →

A Compendium of Works to Increase the Probability of Project Success

Here's a collection of presentations, briefings, journal papers and articles, white papers, and essays, used to increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS) I've written and applied over my career in the software-intensive system of systems domain. These materials have... Read more →

Quote of the Day

I am used to thinking three to four months in advance, about what I must do, and I calculate for the worse. If I take so many precautions it is because it is my custom to leave nothing to chance... Read more →

High Integrity, Fail Safe, Software Systems

I was an invited speaker at the University of Colorado, Boulder for an Advanced Embedded Systems Development graduate class. Here are the charts. Starting on Page 29, I was the Software Development Manager for the Tricon. Safe, Reliable, Available, High‒Integrity,... Read more →

10 Signs You're a Project Controls Engineer

These 10 signs came from a colleague at an NNSA site Becoming tired of having a social life beyond work Spending hours planning and re-planning Friday night out Thinking Rommel would have been more effective if he'd used a Gantt... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Risk Pre-Mortem

A risk management premortem is an approach where the project manager and project stakeholders envision a future where the project has failed, and then work backward to determine the story and circumstances that could have led to the project failure... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If a profession is to sharpen its skills, to develop new skills and applications, and to gain increasing respect and credibility, then theory and practice must be closely related – Martin Shrub Process and Practices without Principles are of little... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"I wisely started with a map and made the story fit... the other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities." — J. R. R. Tolkien When we have no map, no Product Road Map, no Integrated Master Plan, no... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Benjamin Franklin, American author, printer, political theorist, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. Anyone suggesting Plans are of no value has failed to understand Ben's... Read more →

Book of the Month

OK, two books in the same month. Mastering the Dichotomy of Leadership requires understanding when to lead and when to follow; when to aggressively maneuver and when to pause and let things develop; when to detach and let the team... Read more →

Book of the Month

We generally understand a root cause as being the underlying cause of why a particular issue happens. One thing to understand about root cause analysis is it attempts to reveal the hidden causes and effects behind a particular event. In... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The difference between failure and success is the difference between doing something almost right and doing something right - Benjamin Franklin. Opening quote in the chapter "Agile Project Management Methods for IT Projects," Glen B. Alleman, in The Story of... Read more →

Fallacy of the Week

You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there. —Yogi Berra The notion of some in the agile community that Planning is a waste, just start coding and you'll discover the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Most Risk Management, starting with PMI's paradigm, is focused on what if. Instead, Risk Management must focus on If Then and work to reduce or remove the IF before focusing on the THEN. This is the Pre-Mortem paradigm of Risk... Read more →

DDSTOP The Saga Continues

There's been a rash of conjectures about all kinds of bad business, project, and software development (agile and traditional) management ideas of late. Time to update the Don't Do Stupid Things on Purpose (DDSTOP) post. “There’s nothing more dangerous than... Read more →

Beyond the Risk Register

Risk Management starts with a collection of risks. Their probability of occurrence, the probability the risk will unfavorably impact the project. Then some risk handling process is needed to reduce the impact of the risk, or reduce the probability that... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It all comes down to the ability to go up and down the ladder of abstraction, and being able to see both the big picture and the operational implications - Loizos Heracleous in "Strategic Thinking or Strategic Planning," in Long... Read more →