Herding Cats

Project Manager and Agile?

I watched the “Does the PM have a role in agile” at the PMI Agile Community of Practice. It was nice, nothing provocative. I’ve read the Gartner Enterprise Wide and Enterprise Class agile report as well. What struck me was... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise — Thomas Gray, 1742 Read more →

Earned Value Management in a Nutshell

There is on going discussion on forums and in publications about Earned Value and the confusesion between EV and Business Value. Here's content from Ray Stratton's The Earned Value Management Maturity Model, Management Concepts, 2006 that makes it clear what... Read more →

Black Swans? Maybe, Maybe Not

When we talk about risk there are lots of confusing concepts floating around. But risk management, guided by paradigms found in industrial controls, flight systems, enterprise class projects, and "fail safe" systems are a good way to look at the... Read more →

Quote of the Day - The First Law of Project Success

There are only two phases to a big program: Too early to tell and too late to stop. Program advocates like to keep bad news covered up until they have spent so much money that they can advance the sunk-cost... Read more →

Can Agile Fix Bad Project Management?

Vin, has a post that outlines sources problems for project failure. I read this that each topic is the source of the project's problem. And then there is the suggestion that Agile can "fix" these problems. Like many suggestions around... Read more →

What is a good performance metric?

When the discussion turns to measuring project performance, the question of "what is a good metric" comes up. There are many answers depending on your view of the world. Burn Down charts, cost performance measures, schedule adherence, technical performance measures.... Read more →

Wanna See Agile in the Real World?

There are diagrams suggesting structures for feedback and corrective action. One appproach is the Plan, Do, Check, Act loop. But that approach to systems management has only one feedback opportunity - in the Check stage. Here's a better one. Col... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Sketch of the Project's Value Stream

In preparing for battle I have always found That plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President, General of European Forces, WWII. Craig Brown has a nice post titled Sketches go a long way in... Read more →

Agile as American Football

Dewayne Washington as a comment on Projects @ Work (free log in required) about Agile and Football. The notion that an American football team is self-organizing needs a bit of clarification. Certainly during the play, each player reacts to the... Read more →

A Reminder

No matter what development process you're using, how you're measuring progress to plan, or how you interact with the customer, all successful project must start with 5 immutable principles. So when it is said for example, EV is "hog wash,"... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Billion Here, Billion There

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. - Everett Dirksen When we speak about "program controls," there are lots of domains and context where this is a mandatory role. Some are larger than... Read more →

Critical Code: Software Producability for Defense

When there is discussion of agile and complex systems, here is some background on how DoD thinks about this important issue. The National Academy of Sciences is now offering free downloads of PDF's. Registeration is required, but it's free. Inside... Read more →

The Fallacious Comparison Argument

I've come across Scott Ambler's statement from the Dr. Dobbs article again. Rereading it for the nth time, I'm still struck by the fundamental misunderstanding of the term "value" between Earned Value and Business Management. Scott proffers. The fundamental problem... Read more →

Program Management Report

Deltek has their annual Program Management Highlights report. Worth the down load. The key findings around Earned Value, processes related to program success. The big findings are around the use of a Program Management Office as a direct bill to... Read more →

When We Say Domain, What's Our Choice?

The current issue of Communications of the ACM, 06/2011, Vol. 54 No. 6 has an articled titled The Profession of IT, Who Are We - Now? There is a table of the professional subdivisions. So where there is discussion of... Read more →

Is Scrum-of-Scrums Really System-of-Systems? Probably Not

Any system of consequence is constructed from smaller subsystems, which are interconnected. Melvin E. Conway, 1968. Conway's Law (better stated as Conway's Conjecture) was an early concept about the complexity is systems and emergent behavior. There has been mention that... Read more →

First Big Ride of the Season

Elephant Rock is the first big ride of the season. It was a beautiful Colorado day, blue skies, cool, and not much wind, until the end. Didn't have good training weather in March and April, so the last 15 miles... Read more →

Quote of the Day

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"... Read more →

Team Accountability? Really How Does That Work?

We use a business management process from After Burner. This firm is lead by James Murphy, a former Air Force fighter pilot. This months newsletter speaks to Accountability and members of the team being accountable. Personal Accountability is part of... Read more →