Herding Cats

Your Project Needs a Budget and Other Things

There is a notion that all you need for successful project management is a Budget. This is the notion put forth by some in the #NoEstimates community and repeated in a recent Harvard Business Review post of nearly the same... Read more →

All About Me or All About the Mission?

When we hear about not wanting to do something on a project. Say not wanting to estimate cost, schedule, and future performance. Or we don't need to discover the requirements, we'll just start coding and let them emerge, or my... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Nothing predicts the future as much as past impunity When allowed - or even encouraged - to deliver late, over budget, with outcomes failing meet needed capabilities of those paying for those outcomes with no corrective actions to processes, technology,... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Do It Right the First Time (Update)

This quote has two interpretations: New ideas from beginners provide many more opportunities for good results than from experts. Experts understand the consequences of untested, unproven, ill conceived ideas on the probability of success for mission critical, high value at... Read more →

What is Governance?

In the business management business and the management of spending other people's money to produce a product or provide a service, there is a distinct bright line between organizations that have governance or organizations that have no governance. Governance and... Read more →

Closed Loop Control

Writing software for money is a Closed Loop Control System. The Reference is our needed performance - cost, schedule, and technical - to achieve the project's goals. These goals include providing the needed business value, at the needed cost, on... Read more →

The Myth and Half-Truths of "Myths and Half-Truths"

I love it when there is a post about Myths and Half-Truths, that is itself full of Myths and Half Truths. Orginal text in Italics, the Myth Busted and Half Truth turned into actual Truth beow each Myth: If your... Read more →

Conveniently Unburdened by Evidence

Conveniently Unburdened by Evidence - Kate Beckett to Richard Castle When we hear a conjecture about a topic that skips over principles of business, the economics of decision making, or the mathematics of probabilistic and statistical modeling, listen to what... Read more →

Risk Management is Project Management for Adults

In a recent presentation, Tim speaks further about managing in the presence of uncertainty and the application of agile in software development. Plans NEVER go right, planning in presence of uncertainty, requires - DEMANDS actually - estimating risk, uncertainties, unknowns... Read more →

Three Increasingly Mature Views of Estimate Making in IT Projects - Update

There remains serious misunderstandings of how, why, when, and for what purpose estimates of cost, schedule and delivered capabilities are made in the development of software systems using other peoples money. There are three distinct approaches to the problem: Schedule... Read more →

How Think Like a Rocket Scientist - Irreducible Complexity

Orion launched today and recovery after two orbits. The test of the launch system, Pad Abort system, and Heat Shield were the main purposes of the flight. I worked the proposal - after coming off the winning proposal for Hubble... Read more →

Building Software Before Requirement Are Stable??

There is a popular notion that requirements stability is difficult to acheive, because customers don't know what they want. Ignoring for the moment that requirements instability is the root cause of Death March project and let's pretend requirements stability is... Read more →

Is Programming the Same as Software Engineering?

When we hear I'm a developer is that the same as I'm a Software Engineer. What does it mean to be a software engineering versus a developer of sofwtare? Peter Denning's review of he book A Whole New Engineer in... Read more →

Integrated Master Plan and Department of Energy Program Management

Working in Phoenix this week on a Program Management Office deployment for a government agency providing public health services. We're installing processes and training staff on the notion of Measures of Success (a term I had not heard before), that... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. - Peter F. Drucker Read more →