Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

Our knowledge consequently reflects the world. It does this ore or less, but it reflects the world we inhabit. This communication between ourselves and the world is not what distinguishes us from the rest of nature. All things are continually... Read more →

A CIO Contribution to Project Failure

The failure starts with demanding the project to maintain its budget and delivery times in the absence of a “Plan” to go along with the “schedule” of the work. Failure starts with the lack of an adequate description of what... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning

Over the years, the success rate of traditional project management methods applied to software development projects has been underwhelming. These traditional methods are based on a retrospective approach that measures variance against plan rather than providing a performance–forecast that can... Read more →

Rechtin's Paradigm and Project Management

The Agile Project Management discussion is built around a supposed paradigm shift from the past to the future. Although not as strongly worded recently, the notation that the processes of the past have failed us and we need to move... Read more →

What Do We Mean by Risk and Uncertainty?

Risk and Uncertainty are an integral part of all decision-making processes for non-trivial work. The decision-making process involves a set of actions and outcomes, each of which associated with them a probability or a statistical process. All risk comes from... Read more →

The Conscious Competence Learning Model

The Conscious Competence Learning Model has four stages. Each learner must pass through each stage to progress from incompetence to competence. This model is useful in understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The four stages of competence are: [1] Unconscious incompetence. The... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The most unsuccessful three years in the education of cost estimators appears to be fifth-grade arithmetic - Norman R. Augustine, Law VIII Read more →

Book of the Month

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, Tom Nichols. From the dust jacket - Thanks to technological advances and increasing levels of education we have access to more information than ever before. Yet rather... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“The winning general is the one who can best act on imperfect information and half-formed theories.” – Napoleon Bonaparte All decisions in the presence of uncertainty require making estimates of the reducible and irreducible uncertainties that create risk. Knowing the... 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 Read more →

Quote of the Day (Ad Hominem)

Expose an Irrational Belief, keep a person rational for a day Expose Irrational Thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime Dr. Bo Bennett, in Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of 300 Logical Fallacies Some in the agile community, when... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?... Read more →

Software Estimating Processes and the Fallacy of the Week

I'm continually building the bibliography for our Software Intensive Systems of Systems work activities and found in "A review of Agile Software Effort Estimation Methods" It lists Traditional Methods Expert Judgement Analogy Price-to-Win, Bottom-Up, and Top-Up Wideband Delphi Algorithmic methods... Read more →

Presentations from PGCS 2019

This was my second year at the Project and Program Symposium in Canberra Australia. This year's conference focused on the integration of Systems Engineering and Project and Program Performance Management. Here are my talks and a workshop and other papers... Read more →

Why IT and Software Development Projects Fail

IT and Software Development projects don't have a good track record of success. There are many sources for this claim, some credible, some not credible. The Standish Report(s) report statistics about project failure but have been widely debunked for their... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If we start with what we think is a valid number, we will tend to continue with that number. When in fact, we should speak only in terms of confidence intervals and probabilities of success - Sir Francis Bacon In... Read more →

Myth of the Undesirability of Hierarchy

You hear all the time how the hierarchy in our organizations is undesirable. If you read Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life you will learn in Chapter 1 that hierarchy is an innate behavior we have inherited from Lobsters who... Read more →

The Saga Continues

In a recent post, the saga of No Estimates as a basis of spending other people's money continues. Let's start with the definition of No Estimates. Quit estimates cold turkey. Get some kind of first-stab working software into the customer's... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The Mastery of Risk distinguishes modern times from the past: By understanding and measuring risks and their consequences, modern humans no longer perceive the further as a whim of the Gods and thereby have been empowered to transform their world... Read more →

Function Points and Software Development Estimating

The ISO/IEC 141143-6:2012 Standard for functional size measurement Productivity Measurement of software projects. There are five functional size measurement methods in compliance with ISO/IEC standard. NESMA function points (ISO/IEC 24570) IFPUG function points (ISO/IEC 20926); COSMIC function points (ISO/IEC 19761)... Read more →