Herding Cats

Maximizing Project Value - a Review

John Goodpasture sent me his new book Maximizing Project Value, Management Concepts, 2013. I promised John I'd review the book. I started to write a simple review, but then I started marking up my copy and learning and use new... Read more →

Have Project "Bodies of Knowledge" Gone off Track?

Shim Maron provided a link to a post from APM titled We Need to Talk About Bodies of Knowledge. Here's my counter. There are Principles, Practices, and Processes that are immutable for all projects in all domains for all "methods"... Read more →

Learning Is Now More Important Than Knowledge

When I encounter a "subject matter expert," I've now learned to assess if this person is a "knowledge holder," or a "learning individual." This is what informed that "learning." This came to my from a friend and neighbor who is... Read more →

Forecasting Future Performance

Forecasting involves making projections about future performance on the basis of historical and current data. The chart below is a synthetic (same as fake) Cost Performance Index at the program level 2½ years. The area on the right is the... Read more →

The Myth of "Trying Things Out"

There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to... Read more →

A Breathtaking Paper

Came across "Lost Roots : How Project Management Settled on the Phased Approach (and compromised its ability to lead change in modern enterprises)," Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch. From the abstract: The discipline of project management adheres to the dominant... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Terminology that belongs to one knowledge system is often misunderstood by people who work with other knowledge systems. Overcoming linguistic barriers between systems is essential. "Reducing Natural-Language Ambiguities in Requirements Engineering," Lars Schnieder and Susanne Arndt, Ask Magazine, NASA.GOV, P.38 Read more →

Averages Without Variances are Meaningless - Or Worse Misleading

The current Flap over the Public Debt and Growth paper originally produced by Reinhart, Carmen M, Vincent R Reinhart, and Kenneth S Rogoff. 2012. Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes since 1800. Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, no. 3: 69-86, brings... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Every man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success, must end in mere mediocrity - G. K. Chesterson If you're looking for the sure fire formula for success, be it business success or project success, you're going to be disappointed.... Read more →

Agile and the Federal Government

TechWell is an agile site that has been around for awhile. There is recent post on Agile and Federal Government. While the concepts of the post are useful, there are some issue with the underlying processes that need clarification. Earned... Read more →

An Interlude

A new release of Sakharov's book that was banded in the Soviet Union, with the content smuggled out on postcards. This book details the search for the structure of matter and the forces that hold this matter together. For project... Read more →

Quote of the Day

All the world's a System All the parts are Separate All the parts are Connected Successfully managing a project is a systems management process. Project's have parts that are separate - look at the Work Breakdown Structure. Project's have parts... Read more →

The Myth and Misunderstanding of Waterfall

The classical mistake of many agilest is to equate Waterfall with a method that is in use today. Projects @ Work (subscription required)has a discussion about Method Madness in which the classic mistake is made. “Waterfall methods are notorious for... Read more →

Sailing and Agile

In a recent post on the Agile Paradigm, I used sailing as an example. John Goodpasture provided a much better example that needs to be shared across the board. Agile for project managers - a sailing analogy-UPDATE from John Goodpasture... Read more →

Quote of the Day

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my ‘ten minutes’. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a... Read more →

Agile Paradigm

I'm speaking at EVM World on several topics. Embedding agile in Earned Value Management Systems in one. The briefing has been given several times, and gets updated every time.I've used materials from Scott Ambler in the past. His site has... Read more →

Calculating "Earned Value"

Shim Marom has a nice series of posts about Earned Value. It this post he provides the calculation of Earned Value, or Budgeted Cost for Work Performed. BCWP = BCWS x Percent Complete Shim, then mentions that many times it... Read more →

What is Earned Value in Nut Shell?

Came across (through Google agent) a nice short description of what is Earned Value. It's from a British construction firm. The phrasing is a bit off for our domain, so I'd like to clean it up. Let's start with a... Read more →

Crackpot Index

John Baez has a Crackpot Index he uses for scientific theories. Here are his points: 5 point starting credit. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false. 2 points for every statement that is clearly... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The creation of strategy resembles Penelope's web - beautiful loom work by day, unraveling at night -- Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesman, and Leadership in Wartime in Command in Air War: Centralized Versus Decentralized Control of Combat Airpower,... Read more →