Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

- Chuck Close Read more →

Connecting Five Principles, Processes, and Practices of Project Success

To increase the probability of project success, many things have to happen at the same time. Here's are Five principles and practices that can increase that probability of success Principles and Practices of Performance-Based Project Management® from Glen Alleman Related... Read more →

Cost Estimating Assessment Criteria

I'm working an Implementation Review (IR) of a major space flight vehicle, that includes Software Intensive System of Systems. Here are the guidelines for a credible cost estimate (GAO-16-620) Comprehensive Includes all life-cycle costs Defines program, reflects current schedule, technically... Read more →

Logically Fallacious Friday

20 Logical Fallacy Found in Agile and related topics Appeal to ignorance – Thinking a claim is true (or false) because it can’t be proven true (or false). Ad hominem – Making a personal attack against the person saying the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The suprising discovery of Newton's is just this, the clear seperation of laws of nature on one hand and initial conditions on the other - Eugene Wigner, in Newton's Principis for the Common Reader, S. Chandrasekhar There are 5 immutable... Read more →

Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects

All project work is uncertain. Uncertainty comes in two types - Reducible (Epistemic) and Irreducible (Aleatory). These uncertainties create the risk to the success of all projects. Without managing in the presence of risk, the probability of project success is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The Due Date doesn't mean the Do Date If you have a Due date, you need the plan to show up on that date, with what is Due for the cost of that Due Item and have that Due Item... Read more →

Logically Fallacious Friday

Most people know nothing about learning; many despise it. Dummies reject as too hard whatever is not dumb - Thomas More, Utopia The Fallacy - We can't know much of anything about the Future. But in fact, the future is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Those making the original assertion need to bring evidence. Without that evidence, those challenging the assertion have no need to bring evidence. For those making the assertation to ask for evidence as to why their conjecture is correct is the... Read more →

The Myth of Standish Reports - Update Number 2

The Standish Report is raising its head again in the Agile presentations I've seen recently at conferences. Forgetting for the moment all the past "criticisms" of Standish... Standish Report Standish Report and Naive Statistics Finally a Challenge to the Standish... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The speach I love is a simple, natural speach the same on paper as in the mouth; a speach succuleant and sinewy, brief and compressed not so much dainty and well-combed as vehement an brusque - Michel de Montaigne The... Read more →

#NoEstmates and the System of Profound Ignorance (SOPI)

Deming's approach to problem solving is based on The System of Profound Knowledge (SOPK). The anti-pattern to SOPK is The System of Profound Ignorance (SOPI). To obtain a System of Profound Knowledge, we need to start with the four components... Read more →

A Reminder of the Pseudo-Science of #NoEstimates

When you hear... #NoEstimates is a hashtag for the topic of exploring alternatives for making decisions in software development. That is, ways to make decisions with "No Estimates" Think about the conjecture. How would you assess a decision in the... Read more →