Herding Cats

Measures of Effectiveness (MoE)

The talk around the agile community of The Oath of Non-Allegiance, got me thinking about the general question of how to deal with new ideas. There is nearly an endless source of ideas in any organization. Either internally generated or... Read more →

Trading Off Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance is a Ponzi Scheme

A recent post on PM HUT speaks about Balancing Quality, Schedule and Cost. Ignoring for the moment that Technical Performance Measures (TPM) are the new description of the olde PMBOK use of Quality. These TPMs address Measures of Effectiveness (MoE)... Read more →

The Oath of Non-Allegiance

Alistair's call for an Oath of Non-Allegiance, re-posted by Jesse Fewell about I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that... Read more →

Projects that are NOT Agile Software Projects

I realize I work in a unique domain compared the majority of highly vocal voices in the software development world - the agile software development world. Some times I get to connect to the software development world of small groups... Read more →

PM Network Article versus Reality

An article is the current PM Network, A Closer Look: Excel Energy, Boulder, Colorado, USA, describes the smart grid revolution and its deployment in Boulder. While there are many interesting aspects of the project. At $100 million, the project ambitious... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the... Read more →

What's Our Capacity for Work?

Knowing the staffs capacity for work is critical to forecasting cost and schedule. We have a working example taking place at our house. In Colorado, the landscaping has river rock around the house to move the snow melt away from... Read more →

Status Reporting Intervals

There are several posts around that speak to how to report status. How long or how often to report status. There is one overarching principle of all status reporting. Actually there are many overarching principles, but this one is the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A Lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason. If he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect - Sir Walter Scott Read more →

Putting PMBOK To Work

The discussion around PMBOK and Agile has been discussed here in the past. A Simple Way to Put PMBOK to Work speaks to how each Knowledge Area can be applied to general purpose projects management paradigms. The answers to each... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Doubt is a painful condition, but to be certain is absurd - Voltaire Read more →

Project Management in Big Science

Having grown up in my early formative years in BIG SCIENCE - particle physics - I came across this site, while searching for an EVM paper from CERN.ProjectScience.org There are presentation on managing large complex projects in an international setting. Read more →

Project Management of Software Development Projects

The discussion around PMBOK and Agile Software Development management methods has a higher context. The Five Irreducible Principles of Project Management Any project management process or method, and any software development process or method that participates in the project management... Read more →

PMBOK is NOT a Method - Part Deux

After some conversations around what PMBOK is or is not, let's have a quick review starting with PMBOK's words. On Page 4 of PMBOK Version 4. As a foundational reference, this standard is neither complete nor all-inclusive. This standard is... Read more →

PMBOK is NOT a Methodology

The conversation around agile Software Development and PMBOK come back again. Bas de Baar and others have echoed some posts with this idea that PMBOK should be compared with software development processes, specifically Agile Software Development methods. Please, everyone, please... Read more →

Why Is There Still Talk About Agile v. PMBOK?

Bas de Baar posted about Derek Huether's post on Scrum being compatible with PMBOK. This confusion between methods, processes, and knowledge areas reemerges periodically. Here's how is works. PMBOK is structured into Process Groups and Knowledge Areas. They are shown... Read more →

The Perfect PM 2.0 / Web 2.0 Plan

Just like the underpants gnomes PM 2.0 has the Unicorns to help produce the beneficial outcomes Read more →

What DONE Looks Like?

I started using the phrase "do we know what DONE looks like?" at Rocky Flats. It was first coined by Martin Radley, now an instructor at Carnegie Mellon. Martin used the term "done done" to add a little humor to... Read more →

PMI-CPM Spring Conference

Headed home from PMI's College of Performance Management (CPM) Spring conference in Naples Florida. I gave three papers, one solo, one with another persopn, and one with three of us doing a "role playing" skit of a Program Manager, Government... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"Prediction is difficult, especially the future." — Niels Bohr Read more →