Herding Cats

Watts Humphrey Dies

Watts Humphrey has died. He was one of the most important names in Software Engineering, along with others emerging out of TRW in the late 70's. Watt's authored several important works on software engineering, cost engineering of software, and the... Read more →

The Late Finish Strategy

There is a cultural approach of waiting till the last minute, the last day, the last week or month to do something. This is a generally BAD idea in principle. In practice it means you're going to be late most... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Risk Management is Project Management for Adults This quote comes from Tim Lister, in an article titled Risk Management During Requirements. With this in mind what are risks during all phases of the project. There are a set of Risk... Read more →

What if the customer cares about "How the Project is Managed"

Derek Huether has a post at The State of Agile that crystalizes the discussion of Agile Projecy Management (at least for me). I surprisingly discovered that customers really didn’t care how I managed the project, as long as they got... Read more →

5+1 Questions for Success

Latley I've had success with our programs of focusing on simple and concise questions. This moves the conversation for all the handwaving and technical solutions back us to the core issues of success. These 5+1 questions need to answered with... Read more →

Risk Handling

When there is a discussion of Risk, there are four Risk Handling opportunities identified in nearly ever handbook or paper. Mitigate Transfer Accept Avoid But there is rarely advice on when or how to apply which risk handling strategy to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A favorite response will be that your topic can't be explained in one page. I know of no issue that can not be laid out in one page, or in a 15-20 minute briefing - Navy Captain, EA for VCNO. Read more →

Quote of the Day

The most common mistake with briefing memos and point papers to a four star is not to think who it's going to, and to over explain. With four stars comes a certain amount of baseline knowledge. - Commander, The Naval... Read more →

Why We Get Confused About Managing Projects

Project Management is a VERB. Project Managers "manage" projects. No matter what anyone tries to tell us, projects don't manage themselves. There are many styles of project management. Even some where the role of the project manager is distributed -... Read more →

The WBS is Our Friend

Managing successful projects and programs depends on knowing what DONE looks like. One of the views of DONE is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS describes the products or services delivered by the project and the processes that produce... Read more →

Restating the Obvious

On a recent visit to a client in Seattle, there was an article in The Seattle Times, on the forn page about the current troubles at Boeing with the 787. The CEO of Commercial Airplanes had a wonderful quote. "There... Read more →

Expert - Really?

Seth Gordin has a nice post about Deliberately Uninformed. We had a conversation today around the conference room table, while working the cost and schedule integration for an upcoming Integrated Baseline Review. One topic, while taking a break from the... Read more →

You Can Not Manage a Program with Good News

Project Management and Program Management depends on "corrective actions" at the granularity needed to "keep the project inside the white lines." This means sampling the progress to plan at intervals needed to make corrections. To answer the question How long... Read more →

Quote of the Day

There's not enough juice for the squeeze USMC quote for the return for the investment. In this case the investment of good Marines. The quote came from a Platoon leader on the decision NOT to engage a potential enemy. When... Read more →

Uncertainty in Projects

The discussion on risk, certainty, uncertainty, and variability on projects has many starting point. Some make claims that certainty is not possible. Others than chaos is all there is. But the concept of Uncertainty is core to all project activies.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

I got a response to a recent post from James Graham of Training4Change.com. James has a great quote on his site. Hard Times = Focus on Details My response to James pointed out a paradigm we used at a large... Read more →

EVM Gold Card - Here's a Nicer One

The Defense Acquisition University has an Earned Value Management Gold Card, showing all the components of Earned Value and how they are connected. Here's a nicer one from Fermi Lab. The EVM Pocket Guide. Read more →

The Lazy Project Manager Concept

I've got a burr under my saddle about the concept of the "lazy project manager." The core concept is the Pareto principle, and the 80%/20% rule. One quote from the Lazy Project Manager site says... The value of the Pareto... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. - Daniel Patrick Moynihan The recent post about complexity, size, and location having no impact on the productivity of a PM and previous posts about how PM 2.0... Read more →

Another Nonsense Concept

Dave Garett has an interview on Andrew Filev's post about his book "The Lazy Project Manager." While much of the discussuion is outside of my person interest, there was a quote that struck my in manner that appears to be... Read more →