Herding Cats

Work Breakdown Structure

A Project Management site PMConnection, recently posted an article titled "The WBS is Over Rated." This article claims ... But the WBS is nothing more than a tool. A tool to help you determine the activities that need to occur... Read more →

Some PM Thoughts

Over the past week I've been deep into a Programmatic Controls role on a very large "recovery" project. During a week of meetings, I've had some time to jot down some "principles of project management:" Adherence to a programmatic baseline... Read more →

More CPM Bashing

Hal Macomber provides an introduction to the problem of the Critical Path method not meeting the needs of project management. This is the same old song. Project management teams that are too lazy to keep up their schedules. Ill prepared... Read more →

Difference Between Planing and Scheduling

My recent experiences with a troubled project, have led me to the conclusion there is a significant confusion between Planning and Scheduling. Planning is Not the Same as Scheduling Both are needed. Planning comes first, followed by scheduling. When we... Read more →

Large Scale Agile

David Anderson nicely points us to a review of Alistair Cockburn's book, which in turn brings up some questions from his approach: Interactive, face-to-face communication is the cheapest and fastest channel for exchanging information. It is probably the cheapest and... Read more →

Veterns Day

People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf Eternal Father (Download eternal_father.mp3) Eternal Father, strong to save,Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who biddest the mighty ocean... Read more →

Failure of Plans

Many organizations find that though they do a good job of writing Project Plans, they are unable to execute their plans. For the most part, this failure is a result of not putting in place the necessary systems and structure... Read more →

What Are Plans For?

The use of a "plan" depends and several things. Plans can be: Vehicles for communication A program that can executed Constraints on behavior Conforming to a plan has several meanings as well. Being guided by the message of the plan... Read more →

Performance Management and Agile - Some More Thoughts

I sat through a "free and frank discussion" today about a troubled project, Jim Highsmith's quote came to mind... "Conforming to plans is a budget-driven mentality -- a mentality in which the budget, or plan, is sacrosanct -- never mind... Read more →

Performance Management and Agile

I came across a Jim Highsmith excerpt of the Agile 2006 talk titled "An Adaptive Performance Management System." Highsmith says... "Conforming to plans is a budget-driven mentality -- a mentality in which the budget, or plan, is sacrosanct -- never... Read more →