Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

The most unsuccessful three years in the education of cost estimators appears to be fifth-grade artihmetic - Norman R. Augustine Opening line in the Welcome section of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, Steve McConnell. Augustine is former Chairman and... Read more →

Why Trust is Hard

Hugh McCleod's art for Zappo's provides the foundation for trust in that environment If I'm the head of HR, I'm responsible for filling the desks at my company with amazing employees. I can hold people to all the right standards.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Vision without Execution is Hallucination ― Jeffrey E. Garten, The Mind Of The CEO All the rhetoric around any idea needs actionable outcomes that can be tested in the market place, beyond the personal anecdotes of self-selected conversations. Read more →

Quote of the Day

The Sky's the limit when you don't know what you don't know. Read more →

Agile Program Management

Agile Program Management - Moving from Principles to Practices from Glen Alleman Read more →

Should I Be Estimating My Work?

The question asked by #NoEstimates is in the form of a statement. On the surface this statement sounds interesting until the second sentence. The MicroEconomics of writing software for money is based on estimating future outcomes thaty result from current... Read more →

Anecdotal Evidence is not Actually Evidence

When we hear I know a CEO that uses this method and she's happy with the outcomes, has several core fallacies wrapped into one. The first is the self-selection problem of statistics. This is the Standish problem. Send out a... Read more →

Trust but Verify

There is this notion in some circles that trust trumps all business management processes. Most in favor of #NoEstimates trust that people can think for themselves and decide it if applies to them. The critics, not so much The Russian... Read more →

Happy Permutation Day

10/24/2014 1024 - 2014 Thanks to Mr. Honner, a mathematics teacher in at Brooklyn Technical High School. If you like mathematics and appreciate the contribution a good teacher can make to mathematically understanding which is woefully lacking in our project... Read more →

Basis of #NoEstimates are 27 Year Old Reports

The #NoEstimates movement appears to be based on a 27 year old report† that provides examples of FORTRAN and PASCAL programs as the basis on which estimates is done. A lot has happend since 1987. For a short crtiique on... Read more →

Baloney Claims: Pseudo–science and the Art of Software Methods

Ascertaining of the success and applicability of any claims made that are outside the accepted practices of business, engineering, or governance processes require careful testing of ideas through tangible evidence they are actually going to do what it is conjectured... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. - Francis Bacon Everything in project work is uncertainty. Estimating is required to... Read more →

Decision Making Without Estimates?

In a recent post, there are 5 suggestions of how decisions about software development can be made in the absence of estimating the cost, duration, and impact of these decisions. Before looking at each in more detail, let's see what... Read more →

Quote of the Day

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time. − Leonard Bernstein The notion that planning is a waste is common in domains where mission critical, high risk - high reward, must work, type... Read more →

What Is Systems Architecture And Why Should We Care?

If we were setting out to build a home, we would first lay out the floor plans, grouping each room by function and placing structural items within each room according to their best utility. This is not an arbitrary process... Read more →

Connecting the Dots Between Technical Performance and Earned Value Management

We gave a recent College of Performance Management webinar on using techncial progress to inform Earned Value. Here's the annotated charts. Read more →

Project Risk Management, PMBOK, DoD PMBOK and Edmund Conrow’s Book

In a recent post to “Who Is Ed Conrow?” a responder asked about the differences between the PMBOK® Risk approach and the DoD PMBOK risk approaches as well as a summary of the book Effective Risk Management: Some Keys to... Read more →

Managing Your Project With Dilbert Advice — Not!

Scott Adams provides cartons of what not to do for most things technical. Software and Hardware. I actually saw him once, when he worked for PacBell in Pleasanton, CA. I was on a job at major oil company deploying document... Read more →

Intentional Disregard for Good Engineering Practices?

It seems lately there is an intentional disregard of the core principles of business development of software intensive systems. The #Noestimates community does, but other collections of developers do as well. We'd rather be writing code than estimating how much... Read more →

Principles Trump Practices

Principles, Practices, and Processes are the basis of successful project management. It is popular in some circles to think that practices come before Principles. The principles of management, project management, software development and its management, product development management are immutable.... Read more →