Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. - George Patton When we encounter organization where the leaders are not interested in opinions, suggestions, advice, or new ideas, then there is going to be trouble. Steve Jobs had a... Read more →

Alert - GAO Report on Project Suuccess Includes Agile SW Dev

Aaron Smith of Projects@Work, tweeted that the GAO report INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Critical Factors Underlying Successful Major Acquisitions provides 9 success factors for government IT projects. Agile is mentioned for several of the projects: Veterans Affairs Occupational Health Record-keeping System Defense... Read more →

What Does A Master Schedule Look Like?

When we speak about "master" schedules in the space and defense business, this is what they look like. These types of "pictures" are all too common in the commercial world. In the defense business they look notional, but they are... Read more →

Analogies and Other Misuses of Information

Our son is home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday. In his backpack were his Organic Chemistry books and a library book from school. Fractals and Chaos: Simplified for the Life Sciences. This book has guidance for understanding chaos and... Read more →

Our Project is a @#$'ing Goat Rodeo

A Goat Rodeo is situation that is hopelessly !@#$'ed up. There are three stages of goat-ness. First is the Goat Rope. Second is the utilitarian Goat !@#$. This second stage normally requires a serious amount of work to un-!@#$. Lastly,... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“Nobody wants to buy sour milk.” - Tim Cook, new CEO of Apple, when asked why spending is high on supply chain and manufacturing at Apple. When we talk about optimizing the throughput of product development, nobody seems to do... Read more →

The Basis of Process Succcess

Success in the improvement in process requires five common features. These features come from the Capability Maturity Model, Software Engineering Institute. Commitment to Perform: Commitment to Perform describes the actions the organization must take to ensure that the process is... Read more →

Baloney Claims

There's the normal wave of un-informed opinions floating around again. I was reminded to look back a paper that explains how to sort out the claims that would be considered baloney. How Reliable is the Source of the Claim? Self... Read more →

Quote of the Day

One of the biggest planning mistakes people make is to treat the unlikely as impossible. from Deferred Consumption, Better Living Through Statistics When we're laying out the Integrated Master Schedule and assigning risk categories and levels of risk within those... Read more →

The EVM Hoax

A colleague - Pat Barker (adjunct Professor at the Defense Acquisition University) - has a short piece in this issue of Defense AT&L, where he and his co-author Roy Wood speak to the fundamental failing of Earned Value Management. This... Read more →

Veterans Day, 2011

Today is Veterans Day. As a veteran I have a special experience working with and for veterans. It is more than a shared experience, no matter the service, rank, or experience. It is a shared understanding of service, sacrifice, duty,... Read more →

Strategy and Execution Go Hand In Hand

Pat Mayfield has a nice post on Strategy and execution of strategy. Since the word Strategy is misused many times, let's start with a defintion used in the Balanced Scorecard world, focused on IT functions. A strategy is a hypothesis... Read more →

Happy Birthday USMC - 10 November 1775

Two Battalions of Marines were formed 10 November 1775 in Philadelphia as Naval Infantry. The rest is history. To my Marine friends - Happy Birthday Read more →

Quote of the Day

(Many of the concepts that) have dominated scientific thinking for three hundred years, are based upon the understanding that at smaller and smaller scales—both in space and in time—physical systems become simple, smooth and without detail. A more careful articulation... Read more →

Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBOK)

On several programs I've worked there is a phrase for the first 180 days everyone is a systems engineer. The concept of Systems Engineering is missing from most IT projects I've been on. Systems Engineering is a mandatory role on... Read more →

Uncertainty and Risk

Risk and Uncertainty are two different things. Uncertainty does not necessarily mean risk. In the mathematical sense the terms are used differently in practical terms the meanings are the same. But treating them the same creates a problem. When we... Read more →

Is EV Really That Hard?

While doing all 32 of the 748B criteria may not be for everyone, I'd suggest there are a minimum set of EV criteria needed to simply manage any program. These 11 are numbered by their 748B criteria: (1) Define the... Read more →

The RED TEAM

One method of making decisions in the presence of complexity is the RED TEAM. The concept is used on proposal teams as well as organizations that deal with complexity as a standard process - the military for example. The RED... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A partial truth goes on working for a time, but then, instead of complete enlightenment, a dazzling error suddenly intrudes; the world makes do with that and so whole centuries are duped. — Goethe, Maxims and reflections Read more →

How Project Management Lost Its Way

While building background for an upcoming NDIA (National Defense Industry Association) and PMI conference board meeting on Risk and Opportunity management, I came across (rediscovered actually) the California Management Review. In there was a recent paper from one of my... Read more →