Herding Cats

Project Failure Modes

Lots of conversations around why projects fail. One of the best lists I've come across is from the UK OGC Best Practices site - with some slight edits for non-governmental domains. Lack of clear links between the project and the... Read more →

Time Is NOT Money

A great presentation of Time and Money on projects. Read more →

It's All About The Deliverables

Paul Ritchie mentions a previous post. The simple concept is that deliverables is what the customer bought. Whether it is a machine that can fly to the Space Station and return or a piece of software that can do something... Read more →

Evidence Based Scheduling

Pawel Brodzinski points us to Joel Spolsky's entry on Evidence Based Scheduling. I have to chuckle a bit inside. The concept of Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule, our own Deliverables Based Planning(sm), and the guidance found in US... Read more →

Schedule Work Packages First, Not Tasks

Many authors describe how to build a good schedule. Their advice is all over the web. But they are startin on the wrong end of the problem. Start with a Plan, a strategy for successfully completing the project Define the... Read more →

Software Estimating

Pawel commented on the previous post about the difficulties in making estimates of duration and cost of software. From an introduction to a seminar conducted by the 309th SMXG in Ogden Utah. One of the most dominant and serious complaints... Read more →

Is Software Development Management Project Management?

Cory made a comment on one post back that agile (software development) is more than project management. I took that to mean that the process areas of Agile Software Envelopment are a super set of the Process Areas of Project... Read more →

If I'm Doing Project Management Right am I Agile?

This is the crux of the "argument without end," about the role of project management in modern software development. The first question is: If the project is managed in a credible manner, using current "best practices," is the agile manifesto... Read more →

Make Speed Not Haste

"Make Speed Not Haste" is a common phrase. Over a morning coffee this week I had a conversation around the agile notion of "early delivery." I'm always troubled by this statement in the absence of any context or business. Looking... Read more →

Dumb Project Management Questions

Hal Macomber posted a nice reference on "asking dumb questions" and presented "dumb" questions for project managers. Asking the questions is a good start, producing answers is better. The question's in Hal's post seem to be questions of a project... Read more →

Learnings from Risk Management training

Working on some proposal language and came across a PMI Risk SIG May, 2005, Tim Lister found several critical concepts: The biggest risk an organization faces is lost opportunity, the failure to choose the right projects. The real reason we... Read more →