Herding Cats

Book of the Month

This is a book about my favorite subject - the uncertainty in the normal world. As readers of this blog know, managing in the presence of uncertainty is how adults manage projects. This is called Risk Management. And as always... Read more →

Invoking "Laws" Without a Domain or Context

It seems to be common invoke Laws in place of actual facts when trying to support a point. Here's two recent ones I've encountered with some Agile and #NoEstimates advocates. Two of my favorite are: Goodhart's Law Hofstadter's law These... Read more →

A Growth Job

Is never permanent. Makes you like yourself. Is fun. Is sometimes tedious, painful, frustrating, monotonous, and at the same time gives a sense of accomplishment. Bases compensation on productivity. Is complete: One thinks, plans, manages and is the final judge... Read more →

Connecting Project Benefits to Business Strategy for Success

The current PMI Pulse titled Delivering Value: Focus on Benefits during Project Execution provides some guidance on how to manage the benefits side of an IT project. But the article misses the mark on an important concept. This is a... Read more →

Range of Domains in Sofwtare Development

Once again I've encountered a conversation about estimating where there was a broad disconnect between the world I work in - Software Intensive System of Systems - and our approach to Agile software development, and someone claiming things that would... Read more →

Value and the Needed Units of Measure to Make Decisions

For some reason the notion if value is a big mystery in the agile community. Many blogs, tweets, books are spent of speaking about Value as the priority in agile software development We focus on Value over cost. We produce... Read more →

The Problems with Schedules #Redux #Redux

Here's an article, recently referenced by a #NoEstimates twitter post. The headline is deceiving, the article DOES NOT suggest we don't need deadlines, but that deadlines without credible assessment of their credibility are the source of many problems on large... Read more →

Large Programs Require Special Processes

Acquisition Category 1 (ACAT 1) programs are large - large is greater than $5B, yes Billion with a B. This Integrated Program Management Conference (IPMC) 2013 presentation addresses the issues of managing these programs in the presence of uncertanty. Like... Read more →

Agile for Large Scale Government Programs

It would seem counter intuitive to apply Agile (Scrum) to large Software Intensive System of Systems. But it's not. Here's how we do it with success. Agile in the government from Glen Alleman Related articles The Microeconomics of a Project... Read more →

Why We Don't Need to Question Everything

It's popular in some agile circles to question everything. This begs the question - is there any governance process in place? No? Then you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with the money provided to you to build... Read more →