Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

Without a Plan, you're making it up as you go. If you make it up as you go, it's the basis of getting it horribly wrong - Salman Rushdie Related articles Architecture -Center ERP Systems in the Manufacturing Domain IT... Read more →

The Myth of "Discover by Doing"

There is a popular Agile and No Estimates phrase... It is by doing the work we discover the work we must do. This of course ignores the notion of engineering or designing a solution to the needed Capabilities of the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If you can't explain what you are doing as a process, then you don't know what you are doing - Deming Process is the answer to the question How do we do things around here? All organizations should have a... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A skeptic will question claims, then embrace the evidence. A denier will question claims, then reject the evidence. - Neil deGrase Tyson Think of this whenever there is a conjecture that has no testable evidence of the claim. And think... Read more →

Reality of the Value of Estimating

Avoid software project horror stories - check the reality value of the estimate first from Harold van Heeringen Related articles Want To Learn How To Estimate? Local Firm Has Critical Message for Project Managers Populist Books Can Be Misleading Read more →

Assessing Value Produced in Exchange for the Cost to Produce the Value

A common assertion in the Agile community is we focus on Value over Cost. Both are equally needed. Both must be present to make informed decisions. Both are random variables. As random variables, both need estimates to make informed decisions.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit This notion of the basis of all good discussions. It is also the basis of discussions that get us in trouble. For example, I sit in a FAR 34.2/DFARS 234.2 Federal Procurement... Read more →

Systems, Systems Engineering, Systems Thinking

On our morning road bike ride, the conversation came around to Systems. Some of our group are like me - a techie - a few others are business people in finance and ops. The topic was what's a system and... Read more →

Symptoms versus Root Causes

There is a popular graph showing project performance versus the estimated project performance in "Schedule Estimation and Uncertainty Surrounding the Cone of Uncertainty," Todd Little, IEEE Software, May/June 2006. This chart (above) shows data from samples of software development projects... Read more →

A collection of #NoEstimates Responses

The question of the viability of #NoEstimates starts with a simple principles based notion. Can you make a non-trivial (NOT de minimis) decision in the presence of uncertainty without estimating? The #NoEstimates advocates didn’t start there. They started with “Estimates... Read more →

Baseball as Incremental and Iterative Development

Sitting in our seats at last night's Rockie v. Phillies game and dawned on me the analogy between Moneyball strategy and good management of software development. In Moneyball, Billy Beane was faced with a limited budget for players. He hired... Read more →

Accounting for Software Development - Products or Projects

There appears to be a resurgence in the No Projects conversation, similar to the No Estimates notion that has been around for awhile. I’m going to suggest that most of the disconnects around ideas of software development ‒ from No... Read more →

The Broad Range of Domains of Agile

I work on Agile software development programs. Most everyone in Boulder Colorado works on Agile development programs. We meet once a month or so for coffee and talk about Agile. We have formal MeetUps hosted by local vendors - Rally,... Read more →

Mathematical Definitions - Again Misused to Convey Unsubstantiated Information

It's popular in the #NoEstimates community to claim Forecasting is not Estimating. Using English Dictionaries, they build a case using logical like this. It's been repeating nearly continuously since the start of the discussion about how to make decisions in... Read more →

The Misuse Hofstadter's Law

The misuse of Hofstadter's Law is common in many agile development domains. The quote is ... It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law This quote is misused to suggest that estimating can't... Read more →

July 4th 2016