Herding Cats

It Was Bound To Happen Soon

PM 2.0 is passe, now it's PM 3.0. Craig Brown (one of my favorite) speaks to how PM 3.0 is Coming Our Way. I love the comment about the "self directed" and the question of "directed to what end?" From... Read more →

Is My Project On Schedule?

Dr. Andrew Makar, DMIT, PMP of Gantt Head has an article titled Project Schedule Assessment Case Study. The article requires a free membership, so Google that title and join. Andrew makes a good start at the assessment of project schedules,... Read more →

Now Toddlers Can Be PM 2.0 Managers

The use of Twitter, IM, and all the other social media as the basis of PM 2.0 project management methods. Using the Twoddler, toddlers (or the communication language impaired) can now communicate their project status in a 144 character message... Read more →

The Climate Change Debate

Having a nice "discussion" with a former neighbor who moved back to Connecticut. Patent attorney for a major pharmaceutical company. The discussion started around the impact on the climate chaneg discussion of the leaked email. Then went to "what is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts — Daniel Patrick Moynihan Read more →

What Does a PM 2.0 Project Look Like?

When I hear claims like "The best and most innovative project management software on the market," I wonder if the author has looked at the Project of Year in PMI's PM Network. This year it was a power plant in... Read more →

What is a Concept of Operations?

The Concept of Operations (ConOps) is a paradigm found in space, defense, and enterprise IT projects. It provides value to the designers of the system through a perspective not available from the requirements alone. It provides a view of the... Read more →

MIL-HDBK-881A Moving to MIL-STD-881A

Building a credible Work Breakdown Structure is a critical success factor for many projects. The WBS describes what "done" looks like in terms of products and the services needed to produce those products. The US Department of Defense has embarked... Read more →

Knowing How Much a Project Costs is a Measure of PM Maturity

While sitting on our regular Business Development conference call this morning we talked about a client who is preparing to roll out a global project management system. One of the first questions we ask to set the tone new engagement... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Common sense has the very curious property of being more correct retrospectively than prospectively, it seems to me that one of the principal criteria to be applied to successful projects is that its results are almost always obvious retrospectively; unfortunately,... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.” - W. Edwards Deming So where is the process that you're using to manage your project? Is it made up as you go?... Read more →

Rules for Requirements Grammars

Requirements elicitation and engineering is a formal discipline in many domains. A recent paper "A Method for Identifying Requirements Critical to mass Reduction Using DSMS and DMMS," James M. McLellan, Jonathan R. A. Maier, Georges M. Fadel and Gregory M.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds: Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear... Read more →

I'm Out Of My Lane

Watching C-Span Afghanistan and Pakistan Strategy hearing. General McChrystal made an interesting comment when asked something about the civilian processes. "I haven't been a civilian since I was 17 and I'd be Out of My Lane if I were to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Recapturing acquisition excellence is a leadership problem, not a resource problem. - General C. Robert Kehler, Commander, Air Force Space Command, in High Frontier Journal, Volume 6, Number 1 All project and program management tools are of no value in... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“If a profession is to sharpen its skills, to develop new skills and applications, and to gain increasing respect and credibility, then theory and practice must be closely related” – Martin Shub Read more →

What is the Unit of Measure of Your Benefit?

Tom Gilb has a wonderful post about defining "business value." When anyone makes a statement about a beneficial outcome, my first question is "what are the units of measure?" I have some favorites: Our tool saves you time - how... Read more →

Why is it so hard?

Steve Romero comments on the "Same Old Problem," regarding all the reasons projects fail into the ditch. I've modified the statements a bit, but they're still true. We don't have enough resources to get the work done In our organization,... Read more →

Where's the PM in PM 2.0?

The activities of managing projects take on many forms, from very formal to casual. I work in the world of formal and semi-formal programs and projects. I'm not that comfortable with all the informal approaches. But we employee people who... Read more →

The Dinosaurs Didn't See It Come

The Dinosaurs had their day in the sun. They also had a lot of trouble in the presence for emergent competitions. But they dominated our planet for 160 million years. The PM 2.0 advocates are sounding o lot like lifeforms... Read more →