Herding Cats

Capability Based "Done"

I'm presenting a workshop on Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS) to a group of Enterprise Services managers. In adapting IMP/IMS from product delivery management to services delivery management several interesting things have occurred: Only a small portion... Read more →

Three levels of agile project management

The discussion of agile project management seem to be coming from a variety of positions - if I read the forums right. Some approach APM from a software development methodology point of view. Some from the view there are alternatives... Read more →

Increasing maturity and project management

The core concept in IMP/IMS is the assessment of the increasing maturity of the project as time passes. Not the meeting or milestones, or the completion of task - those are important. But how do these efforts contribute to the... Read more →

What's a well formed project look like?

Project schedules are produced all the time in the course of managing a project. They are used in their Gantt form, their PERT form, as presentation graphics for executive meetings, resource loaded reports to show staffing plans, and sometimes as... Read more →

Agile Cross Talk article

For those note familiar with Cross Talk, it is the Journal of Defense Software Engineering, published by the Software Technology Support Center, Hill Air Force Base, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Utah. Cross Talk provides a unique view of software engineering,... Read more →

Project Games

Johanna Rothmann has a series on "project games." One of the games is "Project Chicken" where dates are used in place of deliver ables. The primary of Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedules (IMP/IMS) is to separate the passage... Read more →

Decomposing project work

One of the lessons learned from our recent proposal efforts (besides having really fast machine, nice 19" plasma panels, and good 11 by 17 color printers) is that you must ruthlessly adhere to the following: Decompose the work from the... Read more →

Crtical Tools

Critical Tools (www.criticaltools.com) makes PERT Chart Expert and WBS Professional. I've used them since early versions with great outcomes. This week we had a unique problem that was solved indirectly by PERT Chart Expert. We have a large collection of... Read more →

TOC and Software Development

I just know this is going to get me in trouble but I couldn't resist... Jack Dahlgren posted a comment about Theory of Constraints which triggered a response, which is posted below. I'm not a TOC fan for much the... Read more →

Indented or Outdented Schedules

Just taking a break from sorting out tasks, links, IMP/IMS rollups, critical path calculations and RISK+ runs. I'm making a list of issues with Project after 5 weeks of "full contact" wrestling with Project 2003. Microsoft Project allows you to... Read more →

The Denfinitive Earned Value Book

There are several worthy Earned Value Management books on the market. Project Management Using Earned Value gets my vote. Mainly because it covers the current approaches to integrating EV with risk management and cost management. If you want a book... Read more →

4 Keys to Project Success

Do you remember having one of those "oil & water" relationships with someone - someone other than your teenage daughter? I had (past tense) one recently with an author of a "project management" book. I emphasis "project management" because the... Read more →

Probablistic Risk Analysis Resources

There are four fundamental questions in the realm of risk analysis: What can go wrong? (bad things happen to poorly planned projects) How frequently can we expect it to go wrong? (period of performance) What are the consequences when it... Read more →

Probabilistic Risk Analysis

Today, I finished a "just in time" training session and used the RISK+ tool for the first time in Microsoft Project. It was an eye-opening experience. I'm very familiar with probabilistic forecasting concepts and intimately familiar with Critical Path Analysis... Read more →

Complex Adaptive Systems and Agile Project Management

I'm going through some long-stacked papers in my home office and came across "Engineering a Complex System: A Study of the AOC," Douglas O. Norman, MITRE Corporation. (The AOC is the Air and Space Operations Center is based on the... Read more →

Rolling Wave Planning

Michael Flanagan posted a comment about how a 15K to 20K line project contained "way too much detail." The number of items in a project plan should represent the appropriate amount of detail (granularity) for the problem at hand. The... Read more →

Getting Things Done +

Brian Kennemer has commented on Frank Patrick's (or visa versa it seems now) comments on Jack Vinson's comments on the book Getting Things Done and the use of Gantt and PERT charts as part of what project managers do or... Read more →

Projects, Project Managers and Agile

Driving to work today I was bombarded by all kinds of "project management" activities: Road construction ranging from our Billion $ TREX with many layers of subcontractors and coordination with public access to a small curb repair project I drive... Read more →

The new "Iron triangle"

There was a recent suggestion to "melt down our iron triangle" in pursuit of agile project management. Although I'd probably concur there are some systemic problems with defining the triangle in the absence of a context, I've started using three... Read more →

Formal Project Management and DoI

The Declaration of Interdependence has been updated slightly to reflect some new wording. Since my domain is a few layers above the development of code, it is useful to put the DoI in another context. This context is large scale... Read more →