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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.— Daniel Patrick Moynihan When engaging in exchanges about complex topics like cost, schedule, and technical performance management, I always get a smile when someone says oh that problem... Read more →
I came across a nice blog post from DelancyPlace about the navigation powers of birds. This bird was taken from Wale's to Venice Italy and released and found it's way home in 14 days. 930 miles, over mountains . To... Read more →
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. — Albert Einstein Sherwin, Ronald Paul (2014-08-17). In The Tao of Systems Engineering: An... Read more →
This statement Management is Prediction is the basis of the microeconomics of writing software for money, someone else's money. Along with the quote of Daniel Boorstin's, The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of... Read more →
The notion of not knowing the impact of decisions, choices, approaches is like putting your head in the sand because you don't like the answer or don't what to know the answer. In our domain there are three common root... Read more →
Project Manager: How's the project progressing to plan? Developers: We're spending money, consuming resources, producing outputs that the customer likes. Project Manager: I was more interested in what's our performance against our planned spend, planned resource consumption, and planned outputs... Read more →
The term Systems Thinking is many times used in vague and unspecified ways to mean think about the system and all will emerge in a way needed to produce value. Systems Thinking is a term toosed around many times with... Read more →
In the absence of a control system that provides feedback to the progress to plan, the project is just wandering around looking for what Done looks like. The notion of emergent requirements is fine. The notion of emergent capabilities is... Read more →
A Guiding Principle defines the key criteria for making decisions about the application of a project's Practices and Processes. The Principles provide the project with the foundation to test the practices and processes in pursuit of the project's goals in... Read more →
The Software Engineering Institute is a FFRDC (Federally Funded Research and Development Center). An FFRDC, IDA, is a client. SEI is focused on helping the DOD improve the development of software. Here are Pod Casts of the Principles of Agile... Read more →
Awhile back I posted about Don't Do Stupid Things On Purpose (DDSTOP). This caused some comments about this being a very Theory-X management approach. The notion of Don't Do Stupid Things on Purpose comes from observinig people DSTOP with other... Read more →
For most projects showing up on or near the planned need date, at or near the planned cost, and more or less with the planned capabilities is a good measure of success. Delivering capabilities late and over budget is usually... Read more →
"You cannot have an execution culture without robust dialog - one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor, and informality. This is called "truth over harmony" in Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy and Ram... Read more →
There is a suggestion that only the final target of a project's performance is needed to steer toward success. This target can be budget, a finish date, the number of stories or story points in an agile software project. With... Read more →
The notion of self-directed development teams has a range of applicable domains. Much of the rancor around agile development these days is about how to apply the core principles of agile software development. Do we need estimates? What's the role... Read more →
No data hath meaning apart from their context. ~unknown Related articles How to Forecast the Future Failure is NOT an Option! Read more →
In a recent Skype conversation around agile, estimating, Little's Law and the #NoEstimate hashtag, the term agile community was used. My first reaction was whose agile community? The community of sole contributors? The community of $1B weapons systems and all... Read more →
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