Herding Cats

Revisiting the Double Pendulum Problem

Jurgen Appelo used the double pendulum on page 42 of his Management 3.0 book to explain the differences between simple, complicated, ordered, complex, and chaotic. He defines the term Chaotic as “very unpredictable.” Like many of Jurgen’s definitions, they are... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Planning is Everything, Plans are Nothing

Plans are nothing, Planning is Everything- General Dwight D. Eisenhower While Eisenhower didn't say this quote as an original. That was "No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy" - General Helmuth von Moltke. The quote is used - and... Read more →

Information Technology Risk Management

Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects - Tim Lister (IBM) It can't be stated too often - either manage risk, or risk will manage you. Projects without risk management are late and over budget before they start. All project... Read more →

Compendium of Debunking #NoEstimating Conjectures and Fallacies

The conjecture that we can make decisions in the presence of uncertainty without estimating the impacts of those decisions is without any principles that can be tested beyond personal anecdotes of I know people who spend other peoples money without... Read more →

Another Myth Busted

There is a common misinformed conjecture that large programs are managed just like a military operation. Both these concepts are wrong - dead wrong. Here's a great briefing on this topic. You'll find there are topics about managing in the... Read more →

Empirical and it's Use in Agile

Scrum is an Empirical software development management system Although the Scrum Guide does not contain that term. Emperical processes by definition contain these elements: Visibility Inspection Adaptation These attributes did not start with Scrum, they are control system terms Let's... Read more →

Produce Shippable Software Every Sprint? Really

There is a popular notion is some circles of Scrum, that Sprints need to produce shippable software at the end of every Sprint. This of course depends as always on the domain. Building a UI for the warehouse inventory control... Read more →

User Stories are Not Requirements and Other Things They Are Not

Let's start with the simple idea that Requirements are required items from the project. Capabilities that the project must produce in order for it to earn back its cost to produce. User Stories are a narrative of what the User... Read more →

Drip Funding, Slicing, Decomposing Large Projects Into Small Projects?

Drip Funding, Slicing, Decomposing Large Projects Into Small Projects are popular platitudes of the agile community and have been picked up by the #NoEstimates community as the response to questions about funding work, business processes, managerial finance and making decisions... Read more →

The Economics of Sofware Quality

To predict the future of a software project with acceptable accuracy and precision, it is necessary to measure past project and keep track of current and ongoing projects. Estimation and measurement are closely aligned, and good historical data is of... Read more →

Quote of the Day

They constructed ladders to reach to the top of the enemy's wall, and they did this by calculating the height of the wall from the number of layers of bricks at a point which was facing in their direction and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

One's originality comes in your inability to emulate your influencers - Dale Watson Read more →

Agile at Scale - A Reading List (Update 12)

I'm working two programs where Agile at Scale is the development paradigm. When we start an engagement using other peoples money, in this case the money of a sovereign, we make sure everyone is on the same page. When Agile... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data - Sir Arthur Conan Doyel Read more →

Quote of the Day

Winnie-the-Pooh read two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left - A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Related articles Architecture -Center ERP Systems in the Manufacturing Domain IT... Read more →

How Do You Estimate Work That's Never Been Done Before?

This is a common lament in the #Noestimates community We've never done this before, so how can we possibly estimate how long it will take? Well the first question is has it actually never been done before, or is the... Read more →