Herding Cats

What Happened to our Basic Math Skills?

Making decisions in the presence of uncertainty of a future outcomes resulting from that decision is an important topic in the project management, product development, and engineering domains. The first question in this domain is... If the future is not... Read more →

Making Decisions In The Presence of Uncertainty

Decision-making is hard. Decision-making is easy when we know what to do. When we don't know what to do there are conflicting choices that must be balanced in the presence of uncertainty for each of those choices. The bigger issue... Read more →

Information Technology Estimating Quality

The estimator's charter is not to state what the developers should do, but rather to provide a reasonable project of what they will do. - Tom DeMarco Here's a few resource materials for estimating cost, schedule, and technical outcomes on... Read more →

Everything I Learned About PM Came From a Elementary School Teacher

Our daughter is an public elementary teacher in Austin Texas. A nice school, Number 2 school in Texas. While visiting this week, we were talking about a new book a group of us are working on. While showing her the... Read more →

The Art of Systems Architecting

The Art of Systems Architecting† is a book that changed the way I look at development of software intensive systems. As a manager of software in the system of systems domain, this book created a clear and concise vision of... Read more →

Climbing Mountains Requires Good Estimates

There was an interesting post on the #NoEstimates thread that triggered memories of our hiking and climbing days with our children (now grown and gone) and our neighbor who has summited many of the highest peaks around the world. The... Read more →

Systems Thinking, System Engineering, and Systems Management

There are several paradigms for Systems Thinking. Ranging from Psychobabble to hard core Systems Engineering. A group of colleagues are starting a book with a working title Increasing The Probability of Project Success, several of the chapters are based on... Read more →

Top 50 Influencers in Project Management

Carl Sagan's BS Detector

There are several BS detector paradigms. One of my favorites is Carl Sagan's. This one has been adapted from Reality Charting the book that goes along with the Apollo Method Root Cause Analysis process we use in our governance process... Read more →

Myth's Abound

Myths, misinformation, and magic bullets abound in the software development business. No more so than in the management and estimating of complex development projects. The Standish report is a classic example of applying How to Lie with Statistics. This book... Read more →

Eyes Wide Shut - A View of No Estimates

When we hear all the difficulties, misuse, abuse, and inabilities for making software development estimates, the real question is what does the business think of this? Good question. When our children were young - 6 or 7 - they asked... Read more →

Humpty Dumpty and #NoEstimates

When I use a word Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, it means just what I choose to mean - neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different... Read more →