Herding Cats

Inversion of Control In Commercial Off The Shelf Products (COTS)

The architecture of COTS products comes fixed from the vendor. As standalone systems this is not a problem. When integration starts, it is a problem. Here's a white paper from the past that addresses this critical enterprise IT issue Inversion... Read more →

Architecture -Center ERP Systems in the Manufacturing Domain

I found another paper presented at Newspaper systems journal around architecture in manufacturing and ERP. One of the 12 Principles of agile says The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. This is a developers point of view... Read more →

IT Risk Management

I was sorting through a desk draw and came across a collection of papers from book chapters and journals done in the early 2000's when I was the architect of an early newspaper editorial system. Here's one on Risk Management... Read more →

Why Guessing is not Estimating and Estimating is not Guessing

I hear all the time estimating is the same as guessing. This is not true mathematically nor is not true business process wise. This is an approach used by many (guessing), not understanding that making decisions in the presence of... Read more →

Making Conjectures Without Testable Outcomes

I never met Carl Sagan. I've read his materials (both technical and popular) and listened to his talks. Dr. Sagan was a fierce questioner of many things. But in that questioning process is a framework for which answers can be... Read more →

Deadlines Always Matter

There is a popular notion in the Agile world that with continuous deployment and frequent shipping, dates should cease to matter. The next big feature should be ‘just’ one release of many. But the Capabilities provided by the software system... Read more →

Root Cause of Project Failure

There is much discussion around project failures. Looking for the root cause of failure is the approach taken by organizations seeking to establish the processes for avoiding failure in the future. Many voices in the IT Project Failure domain reference... Read more →

Thinking, Talking, Doing on the Road to Improvement

When there is a discussion around making improvements to anything, trouble starts when we don't have a shared understanding of the outcomes. For example, speculating that something can be done or that something should be stopped in pursuit of improvement... Read more →

Estimating and Making Decisions in Presence of Uncertainty

There is a nice post from Trent Hone on No Estimates. This triggered some more ideas about why we estimates, what the root cause of the problem #NoEstimates is trying to solve and a summary of the problem A Few... Read more →

Estimating Processes in Support of Economic Analysis

On any project with significant Value at Risk Economic Analysis provides visibility to the data needed for decision making. This Value at Risk paradigm is a critical starting point for applying all processes of decision making. The choice of decision... Read more →

Applying the Right Ideas to the Wrong Problem

In the project management business we have numerous methods, process, tools, and techniques to plan and execute project. When we search for tools, processes, and practices. Project success starts with a simple principle. We have to Know What Done looks... Read more →

Are Estimates Really The Smell of Dysfunction?

The #NoEstimates advocates have asked us to see estimates as a smell: an indication of possible decision making dysfunction. It might be useful to explore what's causing the smell. In the normal business process world, when we encounter a dysfunction,... Read more →

Strategy is Not the Same as Operational Effectiveness

It is common to confuse strategy with operational effectiveness. The strategy for Information Technology (IT) projects contains three major themes. These form the foundation of the IT Strategy as well as the tactical processes that will be deployed in support... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning - Part 2

With the principles of Capabilities Based Planning in place from the previous post, here's how to implement it. The key here is to have a capabilities delivery map in place showing what capabilities need to be delivered in what sequence... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning

Over the years the success rate of traditional project management methods applied to software development projects has been underwhelming. Traditional project management methods are based on a retrospective approach, which measures variance against plan rather than providing a performance–forecast that... Read more →

What's the Smell of Dysfunction?

There's a popular meme going around that asking for estimates and making estimates is the smell of dysfunction. We can assume it's management dysfunction. So what are the dysfunctions of management that they ask for estimates from those spending their... Read more →

Populist Books Can Be Misleading

Populist books provide an important role in the processes of "thinking about things." They are simple, understandable in ways that resonant with the those not familiar with a topic, and are hopefully gateway sources to then next level of understanding.... Read more →

Happy 4th of July

Semper Fidelis to all my colleagues and friends. Wait till minute 3:57 Read more →