Herding Cats

20 Reasons Managers Fail and Ways to Fix Them

The Wisdom Journal posted a nice article on the 20 Reasons Managers' Fail. The response to these failures have themselves failed in a common manner. It goes like this. State the failure mode. Use the phrase "don't do what you... Read more →

Yes It Is Rocket Science

In the book The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist is advice we can all use in the management of projects. Dream Judge Ask Check Simply Optimize Do Each of these has sub-secrets. The total package... Read more →

Earned Value and Agile

There's always someone talking about how Earned Value can be used for Agile, or how Agile is the same as Earned Value. Most of these discussions are fundamentally flawed, because they start with the Agile paradigm and try to wedge... Read more →

Risk Management Resources (Updated)

The previous post titled Risks are Not Issues triggered by several things. The notion of risk mis-applied in many IT domains as the management of "issues" Many - OK most - non-defense or non-mission critical environment - risk approaches have... Read more →

Performance Measurement Baseline

I got a note today asking about the contents of the Performance Measurement Baseline. Here's a good starting point https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=243202 If the site asks for a certificate validation, do so. It's a US DoD system. This has pretty much everything... Read more →

IMP/IMS For Everything

I just read a review of a book on A Girl's Guide to Project Management. There were six bullet points for effective team working: Clarity of vision and objective of the project Understanding one another’s strengths and weaknesses Norms of... Read more →

Describing What Done Looks Like

David Schmaltz is not a blog I visit too often. Too fluffy for my tastes. But once in awhile he has something that piques my interest. This time it resonates for reasons David may not appreciate. David seems to always... Read more →

Why PERT Has Problems

The PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) has been around for some time. ["Application of a technique for Research and Development Program Evaluation," Malcolm, Roseboom, and Fazar, Operations Research, Volume 7, Number 5, Sep-Oct, 1959]. There are some who pride... Read more →

Risks and Issues Are Not The Same

Josh has a nice post on his PMStudent blog from Susan de Sousa speaking the "Contingency Plans." A bit of reading reveals this is actually about risk management. Risk Management is of course part of project management. Tim Lister's quote...... Read more →

Anything That Is General Is Not Helpful

Sitting on the M/W/F morning proposal management call, with 30 or so participants, there was a comment made by one of the prime contractor proposal manager... Anything that is general is not that useful This triggered several thoughts: When there... Read more →

Software Project and Process Measurement

For those missing the DeMarco post, here's a counter argument from CrossTalk, titled Software Project and Process Measurement. The notion that measure is of little value is of course unfounded in any software development environment where you are spending someone... Read more →