Herding Cats

Is Agile Looking for Problems to Solve?

Mishkin Berteig pointed out a nice article in the IEEE Spectrum, "Who Killed the Virtual Case Field?" The question he poses - could agile have saved this project? brings up another question. When and where is agile (software development) applicable?... Read more →

What is Stratgey?

Brian Kennemer has a series of discussions about Strategy Breakdown Structures. While the discussion may not be going as he intended, his Bloging brings up an important issue. What is Strategy and Why Is it Seemingly So Hard to Talk... Read more →

Program Management Sites

While catching up on some reading and building a "project recovery" presentation I revisited the Software Program Manager Network site. There was a list of links through the firm that now manages SPMN. Both SPMN and the materials there have... Read more →

CMMI and Agile Part 2

The latest release of the documentation for Microsoft MSF for CMMI is out. It's worth a look,if only to see how vendors of tools are getting into the business of selling CMMI solutions. As a deployer of CMMI solutiuons I... Read more →

Can CMMI Succeed Outside the Government Domain?

This is course is the multi-million dollar question. Multiple millions of dollars for those deploying CMMI as the basis of their software development process improvement initiatives and the vendors of tools and processes that support CMMI. Now that Microsoft has... Read more →

The Systems Bible

The Systems Bible, John Gall arrived this week from Amazon. This is the 3rd edition of a book I discovered in the mid '80s. A quote from the book is in the title page of my thesis "Fault Tolerant System... Read more →

Sizing Schedule Margin using Monte Carlo Simulation

Jack has discussed an approach to sizing the "buffer" needed for a schedule. The Monte Carlo approach is discussed as well. Both are needed for a credible plan in our domain. Here's how you do it: Build the plan (Integrated... Read more →

Agile Estimating and Planning Book Review

Mike Cohen was kind enough to send me a copy of his latest book Agile Estimating and Planning. A full review is at the link above. But in short buy this book. It is a combination of good advice for... Read more →

Our Love Affair with Toyota

Much is written about Toyota and the Toyota Production System. Agile and Lean cite the TPS as the example of how it should done. There is now doubt that Toyota and the TPS are successful. I personally don't like their... Read more →

Agile and CMMI

Agile and CMMI can go together like "peas and carrots" IF and Only If (IIF) they are arranged in the right order. CMMI first then Agile. I say this from experience. David Anderson has a link to Hillel Glazer's Blog... Read more →

Insight versus Oversight

Project management can take on one of two roles - Insight or Oversight. In the agile project management domain, insight is the better choice. In the high ceremony domain, oversight is the better choice. Inverting these paradigms - applying them... Read more →

Preplanning Critical Path

Critical Path Analysis has become important in the last few days on our program. Several questions have come out of the final reviews: How can we validate that we have a credible plan? What are the units of measure of... Read more →

Probablisitic Critical Path

There are numerous criticisms of the Critical Path Method (CPM) floating around the Blogsphere and the Web. They are characterized by Hal Macomber's comments, which have merit. But this approach to the problem ignores - actually suggests but does not... Read more →

Email Styles

David Anderson writes about his experiences with email and his approach to managing this information channel. I was struck by the contrast between David's world and mine. I get very few emails during the course of the day. Maybe 5... Read more →

Software is Different???

I subscribe of a weekly news letter that once in awhile has useful content. Today's edition is titled Mental Models and speaks about how our mental models limit our ability to think about things - in this case software development. Read more →

Scheduling ≠ Planning

Scheduling and Planning are not the same thing. When we were leaving a baseline review meeting this week, the Chief Systems Engineer mentioned... I'm glad you guys are in the planning business not just the scheduling business... Planning is looking... Read more →