Herding Cats

End of Year Round Up

For some unknown reason I feel compelled to write an end of year round up. The top 10 lists, the favorites for the year, that email Christmas letter, are all some cliche. But over the course of the year, I've... Read more →

Building the Perfect Schedule

I'm speaking at the Denver Professional Development Symposium in April of 2012. The topic is Building The Perfect Schedule. LinkedIn has a thread on schedule float and margin. There are several other threads around on scheduling, margin and risk. The... Read more →

Project Governance Using the Program Management Office

Using the Project Management Office to provide project governance involves integrating 4 PMO paradigms. Read more →

Quote of the Day - Good Leaders Are Rare

I found this not only motivating, but guidance for everyday life as well. From Robin Greenspan's news letter via ExecuNet. Read more →

Handling Risks

The traditional term in Risk Management is Risk Mitigation. That is you mitigate the risk. As a verb Mitigate \ˈmi-tə-ˌgāt\ means to cause to become less harsh or hostile. To make less severe Using this definition, we come back to... Read more →

5 Immutable Project Success Processes (Again)

As the year comes to an end, it's time to remind ourselves of the 5 Immutable principles of any project success. Identify Needed Capabilities that achieve the program objectives or the particular end state. Define these capabilities through scenarios from... Read more →

Fail Forward

I was reading a Bloomberg News article while stuck at the airport heading home. Waiting for the inbound flight Denver where they had 2 feet of snow today. The artilce used the term fail forward. The concept is around innovation... Read more →

Your recovery Plan is Not Thorough and Not Credible

When I encounter a triage situation, like the one starting in January, I'm always surprised at how many steps it took for the program to get to the ditch. Small, simple steps that led them over the cliff without even... Read more →

Quote of the Day

One approach to control optimism is to have an unassailable understanding of the facts. When there is optimism in the air, then asking and answering fact based questions clears the way to understanding if that optimism is founded in fact.... Read more →

Denial Just Ain't a River in Egypt

The Mark Twain quote is a good starting point for risk management. The picture below is from Formal Risk Management, David Nicholls in the Data and Analysis Center for Software, 1/1/2004. The DACS is a Department of Defense (DoD) Information... Read more →

The Power of an Integrated Master Plan (IMP)

The current issue of Defense Acquisition Research Journal has an article "Better Schedule Performance Assessments Derived from Integrated Master Plan-Referenced Schedule Metrics."David Bichman outlines the benefits of measuring progress Baseline Execution Index (A measurement used to indicate the efficiency of... Read more →

An Example of Looking Outside the Limits For Those Pesky Swans

I found a nice example for the discussion of Fault Tolerance to Black Swans. The J-2X engine will power the current manned spaceflight vehicle - once an actual launch vehicle is available. This engine must start in space - a... Read more →

More Black Swans

Some time ago there was a discussion around Black Swans and the knowability of low probability - high impact events. The Black Swan is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that an event is a surprise (to the observer) and... Read more →

Two Mandatory Readings

The Association of Project Management (APM) has produced a guide for integrating Risk and Earned Value. I sit on a NDIA Committee in the Program Management Steering Committee (PMSC) that is addressing the same issue - how can risk and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Remarkable Claims Require Remarkable Proof ‒ Carl Sagan Read more →

Risk Retirement

I posted a series of articles on Projects @ Work around the 5 Questions a Project Manager must ask and answer for success. In that material there was a discussion of Buying Down Risk process. This is different than risk... Read more →

Idea Farmers

I just discovered a nice phrase from Jurgen Appelo. IDEA FARMERS. When someone asks what is my contribution to the profession, the project, the problem, or the situation, I can usually come up with something in short order. Either through:... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A well designed system does what it should and doesn't do what it should not The notion of a system is missing from many discussions. These include the application of Agile. Finding the place in the system means first defining... Read more →

Chaos, Complexity, and Entropy

When we hear about complex systems, chaos and how those systems are models of the domains we work in - software development, people based systems, systems of systems - the paper above may provide somoe insight on the limits of... Read more →

Just a remider about risk

If you are not managing the project with Risk Management, than you're driving in the dark, with the lights off, while looking in the rear view mirror. From The Integrated Project Management Handbook, Dayton Aerospace, Feb 2002. Read more →