Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

"Things are managed; people are led" - Capt. Grace Hopper Thanks to John Goodpasture for the reminder. I once had the privilege of "trying" to carry Captin Hopper's bag at the Orange County airport for an ACM meeting she was... Read more →

A $75 Solution to PM 2.0?

While responding to a post on Herding Cats, I came across a $75 Outlook based PM tool MissingLink Project Management So minus the software interpreted process of Andrew's tool, what's the difference here? Outlook is ubiquitous, possibly on every desktop... Read more →

Quote of the Day

We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant systems. Our competitors get average results from brilliant people working around broken systems – Fujio Cho, Chairman Toyota Motors People are needed. But the "system" is the critical success factor. Tools... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner - English Proverb Experience comes from "doing." Doing in difficult situations, with difficult projects builds experience that can be applied to the next project which has difficult situations. Read more →

Navy Seals are Project Managers

Dan Ward - a favorite Blogger and Author in Defense AT&L - has a nice little post about the principles of the US Navy Seals. Humans are more important than hardware Quality is better than quantity Special Operations Forces cannot... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Any New Version of Any Thing

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled - Richard P. Feynman When we hear about the latest "gadget" or "process" that is replacing the current "gadget" or "process," in the project... Read more →

Moving Beyond the Obvious

The amount of "restating the obvious" in project management literature, blogs, and commercial web sites is growing. PMI is part of this as are the numerous commercial sites, mostly aimed at managing IT projects. I'm preparing an abstract for the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ̶ Mark Twain Read more →

Quote of the Day

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity ̶ Albert Einstein Read more →

Reading Materials on the Road

I've been on the road too much in the past 2 months. Between our office here in Denver and two client sites in Phoenix and Albuquerque, I've had time to catch up on reading. Here's some materials that have kept... Read more →

Agile in the Product Development Context

Ken Whitaker as a wonderful post at Gantt Head on the use of agile development methods and the compliance with FASB 86. The notion that agile can be used in the corporate product development environment many times fails to recognize... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity -George Bernard Shaw Read more →

Quote of the Day

Omnis enim, quae a ratione suscipitur de aliqua re institutio, debet a definitione proficisci, ut intellegatur, quid sit id de quo disputetur M. TVLLI CICERONIS DE OFFICIIS LIBER PRIMVS Every systematic development of any subject ought to begin with a... Read more →

Project Communication

The discussion of project communication, softer skills of working with people and the general "self actualization" of PMs and staff fails to recognize a fundamental principle of projects. If you don't know where you're going, You'll probably End Up Somewhere... Read more →

The Final Word on Cost (and Schedule) Estimating

This is not really the final word in the sense that there are no more words to be spoken. It's the final word in showing that point estimates are fundamentally useless. The quest to produce a credible estimate for a... Read more →

The Challenge Question to any Lifecycle Mehtod - Serial or Not

How long are you willing to wait before you find out your late? (Or over budget, or your the thing you're building doesn't work as specified?) That's the question that must be answered by any development life cycle in any... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Thinking In Statistical Language

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write. – H.G. Wells When we speak of cost and schedule estimates, we must learn to speak of the statistical nature of the... Read more →

The Real PM 2.0

Working to determine the Ordinal Risk Ranking (Borda) for a flying machine IMP/IMS for a client. Came across some needed attributes of a collaborative project management environment. For example Project Management – Coordinating budgets, personnel, schedule, and products to meet... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Approaches to Uncertainty

It is moronic to predict without first establishing an error rate for a prediction and keeping track of one’s past record of accuracy — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled By Randomness Taleb argues people constantly delude themselves because they do not... Read more →

Definition of the Day

Uncertainty: A state of knowledge – measured by probability – represented by aleatory and epistemic elements. NASA-SP-2009-569, Bayesian Inference for NASA Probabilistic Risk and Reliability Analysis Managing in the presence of uncertainty is what successful project managers and their project... Read more →