Herding Cats

Management versus Leadership

The difference between Management and Leeadership - both are needed for success... Management is primarily about dealing with complexity; the rule seems to be the more complexity we deal with, the higher our level of management. To responsibly manage complexity,... Read more →

What Software Development can Learn from other Domains

There are recurrent claims that software is unique, it is not like any other engineering discipline, it has its own vocabulary, there is no connection between software development and management and other development and management domains. As Wolfgang Pauli was... Read more →

Software Development and Construction

David Anderson has suggested through Jim Shore that software development and construction have NOTHING in common. As Jim states (and he states at the risk of him being rude) Software development is nothing like construction. Nothing! Nothing? No one single... Read more →

Envisioning Success

Every project shoudl have a means of envisioning its successful conclusion - answering the question "what does done look like?" Here's NASA's vision of a successful conclusion of the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The trouble of course is that this "vision"... Read more →

Essesence of Project Management Part 2

Ron Jeffries describes the essence of project management as... Then the essential question of the project's owners is "When will this thing be done," with a side order of "How are we doing and how do we know." The ideal... Read more →

Agile Project Management

There is a difference between product development methodologies and the management of the project that makes use of an product development methodology. This is not clear in many of the discussions of agile software development. But there is another distinction... Read more →

The Construction v. Software Paradigm

David Anderson has suggested through Jim Shore that software development is not like construction. Once again David may be confusing "project management" with "product development." Certainly the development of a building, highway, and sewage system is not done in the... Read more →

Project Managers Behaving Badly

There is a discussion of sorts going on the New Grange forum regarding the mis-behaviors of a project manager. Hopefully this is a fictional project manager, but none the less these sorts of behavior can be found in real life.... Read more →

A Real Waterfall Project

There has been discussion on the Agile PM forum and other places about the inappropriate use of "waterfall" in software development projects. While waterfall is likely not the best approach for the types of software development encountered in many organizations... Read more →

Project Management Processes

The current run of Dilbert cartons (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) involving Project Management and PMI certified project managers(PMP) has stirred my personal difficulties (and they are persoanl) with the concept of the Project Management Body of Knowledge or officially the... Read more →

What can we learn from regulated environments?

Just north of us is an Amgen manufacturing plant. There is an opening for a senior project management for their control systems projects. The job description outlines the usual technology background, work experience in the pharmaceutical environment and FDA regulatory... Read more →

Schedule Delay Expert Witness

I came across a series of sites this morning while searching for "schedule delay modeling" that provide schedule delay and analysis expert witness services. I knew there were expert witnesses in the medical malpractice area, since our next door neighbor... Read more →

Tools are one answer

Jack Dahlgren talks about his aversion to tools and has mentioned in the past his aversion to project management tools. Our program would be dead on arrival without tools. Project management tools Project Server 2003 and its desktop power tool... Read more →

Risk Based Planning

The last few posted may have been seen as esoteric, obtuse or even worthless for many. But they bring out one critically important concept in planning - the probabilistic aspects of a plan are ALWAYS there no matter how much... Read more →

Risk Profiles

I've received a new tool today - @Risk for Project. This tool replaces the previous tool - Risk+ which comes with winSight - an Earned Value management database that collects EV data from a variety of sources, including Project Server.... Read more →

Deterministic versus Probabilistic Schedule

There are two general types of schedules in the planning domain. Deterministic schedules - are networks of tasks connected to each other with dependencies that describe the work to be performed, that work's duration and the planned completion of the... Read more →

Suicidal Schedules

Big poster hanging over the IMS Planning area: You can con people into accepting a suicidal schedule, but you can't con them into meeting it. Read more →

Love / Hate Tools?

The concept of "loving" or "hating" a tool is interesting. Both Jack and Brian have things to say about Microsoft Project. Jack as a user and Brian now as a supplier. But my take is from another view. A tool... Read more →