Herding Cats

Systems Engineering in the Enterprise IT Domain

Systems Engineering has two components System - a set of interrelated components working together toward some common objective. Engineering - the application of scientific principles to practical ends; as the design, construction and operation of efficient and economical structures, equipment,... Read more →

Estimating Guidance - Updated

There is an abundance of estimating guidance to counter the abundance of ill-informed notions about estimating. Here's some we use on our programs, Handbook of Software Cost Estimating, JPL D-26303 Rev 0 Software Cost Estimation Using A Decision Graph Process:... Read more →

Bad Estimation Is a Systematic Problem

Vasco Duarte posted on twitter a quote (without link) ... Bad estimation is a systematic problem, not an individual failure ... The chart below is from a much larger briefing on Essential Views needed to increase the probability of success... Read more →

Complex Project Management

There is much confusion in the domain of project management and especially software projects between complexity, complex, and complicated. Wikipedia definitions almost always fall short. The book on the left is the latest addition to this topic in the domain... Read more →

Estimating on Agile Projects

The current issue of ICEEAWorld, has an article on estimating on agile projects. Read more →

Constructing a Credible Estimate

To build a credible estimate for any project, in any domain, to produce a solution to any problem, we need to start with a few core ideas. Gather historical data. Unless you're inventing new physics, it is very unlikely what... Read more →

Local Firm Has Critical Message for Project Managers

Rally Software is a local firm providing tools for the management of agile project. Project Managers provide the glue for all human endeavors involving complex work processes. Rally has those tools as do many others. Rally also has message that... Read more →

Mike Cohn's Agile Quotes

Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software has a collection of 101 Agile Quotes. There are few I have heart burn with, but the vast majority are right on. Some of my favorite: Planning is everything, plans are nothing - Field... Read more →

Software Estimating for Non Trivial Projects

When we read on a blog post that estimates are not meaningful unless you are doing very trivial work, † I wonder if the poster has worked on any non-trivial software domain. Places like GPS OCX, SAP consolidation, Manned Space... Read more →

Show Me Your Math

I n a recent email exchange, the paper by Todd Little showing projects that exceeded their estimates was used as an example for how porrly we estimate, and ultimately one of the reasons to adopt the #NoEstimates paradigm of making... Read more →

Populist versus Technical View of Problems

On a Twitter discussions and email exchanges, there is a notion of populist books versus technical books used to address issues and problems encountered in our project management domains. My recent book Performance-Based Project Management® is a populist book. There... Read more →

Quote of the Day

All ideas require credible evidence to be tested, suspect ideas require that even more so - Deep Inelastic Scattering, thesis adviser, University of California, 1978 When the response to questions about the applicability of an idea is push back with... Read more →

Measures of Program Performance

In a sufficiently complex project we need measures of progress to plan beyond burning down our list of same sized stories, which by the way require non-trivial work to make same sized and keep same sized. And of course if... Read more →

When the Solution to Bad Management is a Bad Solution

Much has been written about the Estimating Problem, the optimism bias, the planning fallacy, and other related issues with estimating in the presence of Dilbert-isk style management. The notion that the solution to the estimating problem is not to estimate,... Read more →

Veterans Day

Estimating Guidance

With the plethora of opinions on estimating - some informed, many uninformed - here's my list of books and papers that inform our software estimating activities for Software Intensive Systems. These books range for hard core engineering to populist texts... Read more →

Vectors and Scalars

In the mathematics of physics, there are two essential types of values in all calculations - Scalars and Vectors. Scalars are isolated values, with no outside context. Indeed They remain the same regardless of any context. A common example would... Read more →

Product Development Kaizen

Much of the noise around agile is based on platitudes and words in the absence of a domain and a context in that domain. Here's a possible anchoring processes Product development kaizen (pdk) from Glen Alleman And an example paper... Read more →

Assessing Value Produced By Investments

Speaking at the Integrated Program Management Conference in Bethesda MD this week. The keynote speaker Monday was Katrina McFarland, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acquisition)(ASD(A)), the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. During... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity - Hanlon's Razor Read more →