Herding Cats

Quote of the Day - A Fool and His Money are Soon Parted

A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted - Thomas Tusser in Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573 Say a customer wants you to develop a piece of software, but you want to convince the customer he doesn't need... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Reasoning About Uncertainty

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others - Bertrand Russell It is not certain that everything is uncertain - Blaise Pascal Do not expect to... Read more →

Software Estimating Taxonomy

In the discussion of #NoEstimates, it seems difficult to discover what type of software is being built where #NE are applicable. Some participants provide some insight - OSS for example. Others appear to intentionally not say and consider software as... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Statistics for Decision Making

We don't make predictions because we want them to come true, but because we want them not to come true. Once we come the accept that all processes we encounter in the project management work are actually random, life then... Read more →

Software Cost Estimating Information - Updated

A #NoEstimates poster asked what books (or materials) can be used to learn about software estimating? The first step is the understand that all estimating, for software, for building machines that fly to the moon, for planning a drive to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words. — Cicero, Roman Statesman (106 BC) Read more →

The Problem Using Platitudes For Management Guidance

One quote used as a Platitude for the #NoEstimates discussion is... This is from the Art of War. The problem of course is Lao Tzu had no awareness of probability and statistics, and the Box Jenkins Autoregressive Moving Average algorithm... Read more →

Alternatives to Agile Estimation

Neil Kellick has a presentation on the alternatives to estimation on agile projects. Neil is a proponent of #NoEstimates. This presentation has several interesting points around the #NoEstimates discussion. When you split work – page 16 – how do you... Read more →

How to get a "D" in the Freshman Finance Class

A vocal #NoEstimates poster on twitter has a wonderful statement #NoEstimates is about making decisions and maximizing ROI (Return on Investment) Except of course for one slight problem So if we don't know the cost of the investment - the... Read more →

Discussions Worth Having

One of my favorite Bloggers is Shim Maron. His latest post is about Discussions Worth Having. There he talks about topics I have interest in as well. In a failed project, there is no one to blame except the project... Read more →

Seminal Concept of all Project Management

Seems there is a seminal moment in the #NoEstimates conversation. The spectrum of questions - without a lot of answers yet - comes down to two ends of the spectrum I give you a fixed budget and you tell me... Read more →

Why Hasn't #NoEstimates Produced Actionable Outcomes Yet?

The #NoEstimates discussion seems to be stuck on exploring and questioning everything. To my sensibility, this is called taking out your brain and playing with it. Nothing really actionable, lots of go look for dysfunction, lots of restating the obvious... Read more →

Forecasting The Future is Sporty Business, So Knowledge, Skill and Experience is Needed

One of the posts on Tweeter's #NoEstimates is a presentation of bad forecasts. This is one of the analogies like many analogies that is interesting but fatally flawed. First, forecasting political, technical, economic outcomes is not the same as forecasting... Read more →

Want to Forecast the Future? Here's How - Part 2

One of the suggestions in the #NoEstimates community is that you can't forecast the future. They confuse estimating with forecasting at times, but estimating a variable is a single point forecast. Forecasting can be both single point or time series... Read more →

Critical Thinking Insight

Here's the quote that tells it all I've blocked the name to avoid all the whining that will result. Lao Tzu was a 6th century BC philosopher who's pithy quotes are used an misused through civilization. The core problem with... Read more →

#NoEstimates Makes Contact With Reality

The discussion around #NoEstimates was just about to come to an end, when Vasco posted a nice summary. Here's my take on his post in the domain and context of large, complex, mission critical, enterprise class software intensive projects. Vasco's... Read more →

A Decoder Ring for #NoEstimates

Chris Chapman has a nice post addressing some of the issues of #NoEstimates. This tries to explain why we should consider the approach of developing software without an estimate of the duration or cost. Let's look at these concepts in... Read more →

The #NoEstimates Finale

Pat Richard wrote the blog I wanted to. I've had a conversation of sorts with one of the "leaders" of the #NoEstimates movement who talked in circles when asked where is this method applicable outside your examples of a 5... Read more →

Can We Make a Decision Without Knowing the Cost?

There is an immutable set of questions that need answers before we can determine the probability of success for our project. How much is this project going to cost when we are done? How long is it going to take... Read more →

How to Forecast the Future

In the YouTube presentation from the previous post, titled Predicting the Future, there was a statement made about minute 9:08 where it is stated the only way that you can estimate is if you can look into the future and... Read more →