Herding Cats

NOT Negotiating Estimates is Example of Bad Management (Update)

A recent Blog post used an example of negotiated estimates between the developers and management. In the example buying a car is used and compared to negotiated the cost of software development. The car was an example of knowing information... Read more →

Another Agile Myth

A popular Agile phrase goes like this. ...it's important to know what Not to build This begs the question, who's building things that other people don't want? Where's the process for assessing what people want? Seems pretty obvious that if... Read more →

The Dark Sides of Agile and Earned Value Management and Their Fixes

Both Agile development and Earned Value Management are coming together in the Federal Government. DOD and many Federal Civil agencies are adopting the use of Agile software development. At the same time, FAR 34.2 and DFARS 234.2 are flow down... Read more →

The Problem with #Noestimates

The notion of a balanced discussion of the topic of Not estimating work on agile projects has yet to produce any principles on which this can occur. The #NoEstimates advocates have not provided the principles by which a decision about... Read more →

Project Management is a Closed Loop Control System

Without a desired delivery date, target budget, and expected capabilities, a control system is of little interest to those providing the money at business level. There is no way to assure those needs – date, budget, capabilities – can be... Read more →

Forecasting Cost and Schedule Performance in the Presence of Uncertainty

Estimating in the presence of uncertainty is a critical success factor for all project work. Uncertainty prevails on all projects, no matter the domain, development process, or governance method. Uncertainty from underlying statistical variances. Uncertainty from probabilistic events. Here's an... Read more →

Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects

Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects - Tim Lister Tim's quote offends some people. Here's a collection of his presentations. But this not really the point of this blog. I'm working two programs where Agile (Scrum and SAFe) is... Read more →

Awards Season

Read the full article at CEOLEVEL Read more →

Quote of the Day

Great equations change the way we perceive the world. They reorchestrate the world - transforming and reintegrating our perception by redefining what belongs together with what. Light and waves. Energy and mass. probability and position. And they do so in... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning

I'm working two programs where Earned Value Management, through FAR 34.2 and DFARS 234.2 are applicable. These programs are also Software Intensive Systems applying Agile development processes. Capabilities Based Planning is defined as ... A method involving the functional analysis... Read more →

Quote of the Day

There is no problem so complicated that you can't make it worse - a common phrase in the astronuaght business Read more →

Quote of the Day

The impression that "our problems are different," is a common disease that afflicts management to work over. They are different, to be sure, but the principles that will help improve the quality of product and service are universal in nature... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. On particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not... Read more →

Quote of the Day

When you think about Agile self organizing teams and their benefits to sofwtare development, remember the characters in Lord of the Flies were a self organizing team - @agileklzkittens Related articles Architecture -Center ERP Systems in the Manufacturing Domain Self-Organization... Read more →

The Notion of Value in Agile Projects

The Holy Grail of all Agile discussions goes like this ... We focus on value over cost This is a mantra repeated by agilest and vendors of agile tools as well. The big question is ... What are the units... Read more →

Estimating the Future Based on What We Know Today

In the business of estimating in the presence of uncertainty, a useful tool is Bayesian analysis of what we know today to make forecasts or estimates of the future. The Bayesian approach to inference, as well as decision-making and forecasting,... Read more →