Herding Cats

How To Fix Martin Fowler's Estimating Problem in 3 Easy Steps

Martin Fowler has a nice post about estimating software development projects in an agile paradigm. It starts like this First Bullet When asked to produce or handed an estimate, respond with the following: What confidence level are you needing for... Read more →

Elements of Project Success

There's a continuing discussion on LinkedIn and Twitter about project success, the waste of certain activities on projects, and of course the argument without end on estimating the cost of producing the value from projects. It's really a argument without... Read more →

New Books for Work

Our current work efforts on forecasting Estimate A Completion and connecting the dots between Earned Value Management and Technical Performance Measures and the sources of Measures of Performance an Measures of Effectiveness is proceeding. Conference and journal papers are coming... Read more →

Delivering Needed Capabilities

The needed capabilities for business or mission success starts with the Concept of Operations. With the ConOps we can identify the needed capabilities. Below is an actual project, with increasing capabilities for an insurance firm. The order of these delivered... Read more →

People, Process, or Tools

There is a continuing debate - is it process or people? We'll ignore tools for the moment. I made a post on TWTR - process is king - after a lunch time business development meeting about planning for next quarter.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Recipes exist to get ideas, not to be followed to the letter† The recipe for a project is described by its Capabilities. The technical and operational requirements need to support those capabilities, but defining those up front and following them... Read more →

Concept of Operations First, then Capabilities, then Requirements

The common practice of starting with requirements leads to the common complaint that requirements change; we don't know what we want yet, and our users aren't very good at defining requirements, so we'll let them emerge. While these are common,... Read more →

Process Improvement In A Complex World

Much of the discussion around making improvements in processes fails to address the governance aspects of a business or organization. Instead it focuses on the personal aspects. Agile development of a software team, without the corporate impacts. The desire to... Read more →

Connecting the Dots Between Principles and Practices of Project Success

When we hear about all the methods of managing projects, the PMI Body of Knowledge, PRINCE2, home grown and commercial solutions - always look at them in the light of these 5 Immutable Principles and the 5 Practices then implement... Read more →

We Can Know the Business Value of What We Build?

In a recent post titled #NoEstimates - Really? there was an interesting comment. Clearly, the business value of any feature or project can not be known with much certainty in advance of it being implemented. Still, for the purpose of... Read more →

EVM World Coming Soon

Speaking on Techncial Performance Measures and conducting workshop on same topic with Mr. Kranz and Tom Coonce of IDA. Read more →

We're Asking the Wrong Question

The right question for any suggested improvement, change, or suggesting we stop doing that need to produce an answer to ... Does this suggestion increase the probability of project success? This means tracing the suggestion to the outcome of the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Wisdom begins when we learn the difference between "that makes no sense" and "I don't understand". Mary Doria Russell It is that difference that is needed to assess when a idea passes the smell test. Read more →

Software Creativity - Jazz or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

There is a popular notion that writing software is like jazz. A loose collection of participants, improvising around a theme to produce an emergent outcome. These participants play off each other, react to emergent streams of melody, contribute their own... Read more →

What Does It Mean To Be DONE?

There is a continuing discussion in the agile community about delivering value in the order set by the customer. Along with this discussion is the use of the word DONE. A popular phrase is no requirement or piece of software... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Ninety percent of everything is crud - Theodore Sturgeon Related articles Models ... Read more →

Many Explorers Don't Make It Home

When I hear the phrase we're exploring I'm reminded that in fact many who explore without a plan, measures of their progress progress against this plan, a risk management Plan-B for getting home when things go wrong, and without insufficient... Read more →

IT Governance and Decision Rights

In the discussions around #NoEstimates, it's finally dawned on me - after walking the book shelf in the office - the conversation is split across a chasm. Governance based organizations and non-governance based organizations. Same is the case for product... Read more →

5 Questions That Need Answers for Project Success

These 5 questions need credible answers in units of measure meanigful to the decision makers. Capabilities Based Planning starts with a Concept of Operations for each deliverable and the system as a whole. The ConOps describes how these capabilities will... Read more →

Don't Start With Requirements Start With Capabilities

Lot's of myth floating around about requirements elicitation and management. Starting with requirements is not how large, complex, mission critical DOD and NASA programs work. Start with Capabilities. This cna be directly transferred to Enterprise IT. Here's a map of... Read more →