Herding Cats

Business Rhythm Drives Process

The agile notion of delivering early, delivering often is a wonderful platitude, but ignores the underlying business rhythm for accepting the software features into producitive use by the dynamics of any business or market channel. Here's some examples of business... Read more →

Don't be an Accidental Project Manager

A common problem in our development of the Program Management Office is getting so caught up in putting out fires. This is Covey's “addiction of the urgent.” In this process we lose the big-picture perspective. This note is about the... Read more →

Why is Statistical Thinking Hard?

I'll admit up front I'm hugely biased toward statistical thinking. As one trained in physics and the mathematics that goes with physics, and Systems Engineering and the math that goes with that thinking about statistics is what we do in... Read more →

Operationalism

When we hear about a process, a technique, or a tool, ask in what unit of measure are you assessing the beneficial outcome of applying those? This idea started with P. W. Bridgman's principle that the meaning of any concept... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Writing SW For Money Is Micro-Economics

We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it. A definition by the method of measuring a quantity is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense — Sir Hermann Bondi So when we... Read more →

All Project Numbers are Random Numbers — Act Accordingly

The numbers that appear in projects — cost, schedule, performance — are all random variables drawn from an underlying statistical process. This process is officially called a non-stationary stochastic process. It has several important behaviours that create problems for those... Read more →

We're All Looking for the Simple Fix - There Isn't One

Every project domain is looking for a simple answer to complex problems. There isn't a simple answer to complex problems. There are answers, but they require hard work, understanding, skill, experience, and tenacity to address the hard problems of showing... Read more →

Quantifying the Value of Information

From the book How To Measure Anything, there is a notion starting from the McNamara Fallacy. The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is okay as far as it goes. The second step is to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” Along with those assertions (with no... Read more →

How to "Lie" with Statistics

The book How To Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff, 1954 should be on the bookshelf of everyone who spends other peoples money for a very simple reason. Everything on every project is part of an underlying ststistical process. Those expecting... Read more →

Why We Must Learn to Estimate

The notion of making any decisions without know something about the cost of that decision, the schedule impacts or the resulting impacts on delivered capabilities is like the guys here in the picture. They stared building their bridge. Will run... Read more →

How To Measure Anything

When it is said that we can't forecast or estimate, it brings a smile. Since in fact forecasting and estimating is done all the time. Not always correctly, and not always properly used once the estimate is made, but done... Read more →

Domain and Context Are King, Then Comes Process and Experience

In many discussions of process there is a proposed solution to a problem in the absence of domain and context. Over generalization is usually the result. This is so common in the agile development world, that I built a short... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation — Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827) So when you hear we can't forecast the future, or estimates are evil, or we can't know what we need to do until we start doing,... Read more →

Impact Mapping and Integrated Master Planning

In the literally 1,000's of pieces of correspondence I receive or send monthly, I came in contact with Impact Mapping, Gojko Adzic. At the same time I got an email from a person I met while speaking at last weeks... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should become the most important object of human knowledge — Pierre Simom Laplace, 1812. The notion that all project variables are Random Variables is not... Read more →

Making Estimates For Your Project Requires Discipline, Skill, and Experience

I'm speaking at the ICEAA conference here in Denver (not on travel for once) on forecasting the Estimate At Completion (EAC) for large complex programs using Box Jenkins algorith. And the Cure for Unanticipated Growth in EAC.The notion of making... Read more →

An Agile Estimating Story

I'm working a proposal for a university client that is submitting on a sofwtare, hardware, and operations research project to a large research organization. The buyer has a budget in the single digit millions. The response to the RFP is... Read more →

First Comes Theory, Then Comes Practice

The book Integrated Project Management and Control: First Comes Theory, Then the Practice, Mario Vanhoucke, arrived while I was on a business trip. Mario has spoken at several Earned Value Management conferences, written two other important books Measuring Time and... Read more →

Basic Rules of Business

Basic Business Facts For Profit Seeking Firms Want to know the cost of goods sold needs and the selling price so the profit margin can be known. Want to know the overhead, fringe, and benefits, non-recoverable sunk costs that are... Read more →