Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

There are as many nights as there are days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose... Read more →

A Compendium of Risk Management Resources

This blog page is dedicated to the resources used to manage the risk encountered on a software-intensive system of systems (SISoS) using traditional and agile development methods. Let's start with a critical understanding of the purpose of managing risk on... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It is counterproductive to have an agile development process if you don’t have an agile product architecture - Rick Dove, Parshift.com Read more →

Quote of the Day

Do not like some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and rocky way to heaven, While, like a puffed and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And heeds not his own counsel. ― Hamlet Read more →

Quote of the Day

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use - Soren Kierkegaard Read more →

Book of the Month

Darwin's dangerous idea is the belief that evolution, a mindless, mechanistic, purposeless process, gave rise to the single, branching tree of life and, further, that this process eliminates the need for invoking an intelligent God as the source of the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"You cannot have an execution culture without robust dialog – one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor, and informality. Intense debate brings up all sides of an issue, even if it makes people uncomfortable." ... from ―... Read more →

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Here, Cleanthes, I find myself at ease in my argument. Here I triumph. Formerly, when we argued concerning the natural attributes of intelligence and design, I needed all my skeptical and metaphysical subtlety to elude your grasp. In many views... Read more →

A Compendium of Blog Posts on Earned Value Management

Earned Value Management is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner. This objective manner starts with defining the planned Physical Percent Complete for a product or service, at a planned time, with the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The person who gets the furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The Sure-thing Boat never gets far from the shore ― Dale Carnegie Read more →

A Compendium of Blog Posts on Project Management

Project management is a collection of techniques for proposing, planning, implementing, managing, and evaluating projects, combined with the management of the people executing the project. It is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to a broad range of... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Agile Software Development

In software development, agile is a set of practices intended to improve the effectiveness of software development professionals, teams, and organizations. It involves discovering requirements and developing solutions through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer/end... Read more →

A Compendium of Monte Carlo Simulation Resources

Estimation of cost, duration, and technical performance activities is one of the most difficult aspects of project management. Monte Carlo simulations are based on the manipulation of random numbers to evaluate probable outcomes, with applicability in a variety of different... Read more →

Quote of the Day

This is a story about four people: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Agile

In the software development domain, Agile is a set of practices intended to improve the effectiveness of software development professionals, teams, and organizations. It involves discovering requirements and developing solutions through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Estimating

Estimating is a critical part of project planning, involving a quantitative estimate of project costs, resources, or duration. Here's a starting summary of Estimating Want To Learn How To Estimate? Part Troisième And blogs that speak to estimating projects in... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Capabilities Based Planning

Capabilities-Based Planning is planning, under uncertainty, to provide capabilities suitable for a wide range of business challenges and circumstances, while working within an economic framework. Capabilities-based Planning emphasizes flexibility, adaptiveness, and robust capabilities, implying a modular building-block approach to Enterprise... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis (RCA) is the process of discovering the root causes of problems in order to identify appropriate solutions. Increasing the Probability of Project Success Naivety of the 5 Whys's (Updated) How to Think Like a Scientist How Do... Read more →

A Compendium of Blog Topics

Over the past 16 years of the Herding Cats blog, there have been a consistent collection of topics on topics critical the increasing the probability of project success. Here's the collection. It's incomplete but will be complete soon. Project Management... Read more →