Herding Cats

Origins and Myth of PERT

The recent discussion of PERT took me on a trip into the literature. There was a suggestion that ... "... there are some quite famous scientists and mathematicians that created these techniques (PERT), but they were also proven by millions... Read more →

PERT Completion Times are Bad

The previous post suggested that adding PERT estimates in an algebraic manner results in a serious underestimate of the completion times for a project (or cost or task duration or your expected returns on a mutual fund investment). This topic... Read more →

Estimating

There is a posting on Gantt Head (www.gantthead.com) titled "Estimation Blues" in which the author describes an approach to estimating project durations using the PERT method and provides a spread sheet to compute the estimated duration for a project. The... Read more →

Capabilities

The current issue of the INCOSE Insight Vol 8(1) has an article of Capabilities Engineering for Systems of Systems. There are four definitions of capabilities from four different nations defense departments: Australia - the power to achieve a desired operational... Read more →

Project Management is About Finding the Truth

There are many roles defined for what a project manager does. Most are around the clerical aspects of project management. Budgets, schedules, requirements, assessments, measurements, etc. While these are important to the success of the project, they are just that... Read more →

End of an Era(s)

Two major projects are coming to an end tomorrow and earlier this month. Titan IVB Launch With the launch of Titan 4B NROL-16 the last of the ballistic missile based launch vehicles will place a satellite into polar orbit. Tomorrow... Read more →

Approaches to Critiques

Brian Kennemer has spoken about an important topic in "Nature of Critique" and his desire to only work with people who fall into the Type I category. Type I - those who think criticism is about polishing out the scratches... Read more →

Three Kinds of PMs

There are three kinds of project managers at the end of the project: Those who say "what happened?" Those who let it happen Those who made it happen What Happened? Not knowing the train wreck was coming is a common... Read more →

MIT Open Courseware

If you haven't discovered MIT Open Courseware, you should. There are many course on project management or project management related subjects. Here are some courses targeted to project management: System and Project Management Project Evaluation Project Management This concept provides... Read more →

What does a good plan look like?

There have been some useful discussions on New Grange about what is a good project management tool? The problem of course is What do you mean by project management? What kind of projects are you managing? One approach is to... Read more →

Cost and Schedule Integration

We're finishing up the outcomes from our Integrated Baseline Review (IBR). In the IBR the cost, schedule and programmatic aspects of the program are reviewed in detail to confirm all the participants are "on the same page." That all the... Read more →

Smaller Projects have larger Dispersions

I'm finishing up some work for defining the strategy for "probabilistic schedule and cost analysis" on a large program. This effort has focused on getting the network of tasks properly structured some the Monte Carlo simulation tool can be applied... Read more →

Managing as Designing

The Association of Computing Machinery (www.acm.org) has an on-line reading service. The first book that caught my eye was Managing as Designing edited by Richard J. Borland and Fred Collopy. This is one of those rare business books that actually... Read more →