Herding Cats

Finish to Start Is All There Is

I've discovered the site Mosaic Projects. There is a wealth of material that I'm starting to go through. A useful paper is titled Links, Lags, and Ladders. It is about the topology of project schedules. In Microsoft Project there are... Read more →

Management of Projects

The conventional definition of management is... To control and direct; to administer; to treat, as a person, with caution and judgment The Software Engineering Institute's People Capability Maturity Model Integrated (P-CMMI) definition is... To accept stewardship of a resource; to... Read more →

A Resource for PM Materials

I've been embedded on a proposal team of late as well as working on my presentation of EVM World 2009 and manning the booth at several trade shows - Space Symposium, Space Command. The result is a lack of ideas... Read more →

MIL-HDBK-881A No Longer Guidance

MIL-HDBK-881A was classified as "guidance." Now it's Military Standard (MIL-STD-881 is the likely designator) with the related mandatory requirements. Poorly formed WBS's (wib-us) as it is pronounced, are common in many domain of DoD. There are equally a number of... Read more →

Rediscovering how (some) A&D programs are managed

I love it when someone (re)discovers a concept. Such a concept is the Declaration of Interdependence for Modern Management at Alistair Cockburn's site. I'll paraphrase a bit from the middle narrative: The DOI is a 12 step process, that can... Read more →

Modeling of Cost and Schedule

Alistair Cockburn referred to a paper posted in PMForum. (Along with Alistair's site, PMForum is a MUST subscribe site for anyone claiming to be a project manager) The paper suggests the causal source of the "fat tails" for distribution of... Read more →

A Program Manager's View of AIG

In the application of Earned Value of programs, there is a value below which we move on when trying to get all the control accounts to balance for the period of performance. Usually if you can get all the numbers... Read more →

Planning

A friend provided a definition of Planning several years ago, that I've reused many times when the question of Planning and Scheduling comes up. Mike Dwyer introduced me to this concept... Planning is the ongoing dynamic activity of peering into... Read more →

Deliverables are what the customer bought

Shawn Kelly posted a comment on the Deliverables Based Planningsm topic stating he has experienced difficulty in the IT domain with getting engineers to speak in a "deliverable" language. Shawn mentions some responses are: Trust me its done. How dare... Read more →

Nothing New Under the Sun

The GAO (Government Accountability Office) has recently published papers on the difficulties agencies are having in managing their programs. There is nothing new under the sun. Read Controls Over Consulting- Service Contracts At Federal Agencies Need Tightening, dated 20 March... Read more →

Planning is NOT Scheduling

A post on Paul Rasmussen's Blog describes how to "Plan for Success." The listed items are all necessary for success, but they may not be sufficient for success. The Plan is a Strategy for the Success of the Project. This... Read more →

16 Critical Software Practices

The Software Program Managers Network has a nice site with 16 Critical Software Practices useful to anyone in the software development business. The details behind them can be found at "16 Critical Software Practices." Read more →

NASA PM Challenge 2009 Presentations Available

NASA's PM Challenge 2009 presentation are now available. This annual event provides some useful information, some restating of the obvious, and some blatant advertising of professional services by consulting companies. A few of my favorites presentations include: Developing & Validating... Read more →

Risk Management and Project Principles and Practices

Paul made a comment regarding the role of risk management for the previous post. The topic of risk management has many points of view: PMBOK(r) Chapter 11 DoD PMBOK(r) Chapter 11 DoD Risk Management David Hillson's approach described in his... Read more →

Deliverables Based Planning™

The Deliverables Based Planning™ method is being deployed in several business domains. Ranging from traditional enterprise IT projects to space and defense programs with full Earned Value management processes These four process areas represent a sequence of activities that increase... Read more →

Cost Estimating and Assessment

Thanks to Paul Solomon for notifying all of us on his mail list that the final release of the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide is out. While many in the project management domain may view this 438 page guide... Read more →

S = k log W

The more work you have in the current period of performance, the higher the entropy of the project. Adjust the workload to match the energy available to manage that workload. This means there must be sufficient cost and schedule margin... Read more →