Herding Cats

Principles, Processes, and Practices of Project Success

Principles are timeless. Practices and Process are Fads. A Principle a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning. A Practice is an application or use... Read more →

Reference Class Forecasting

Our long time friends have moved to our neighborhood here in Colorado. Their moving van arrived today. We brought coffee to them while their old house was being unloaded into the new house. Talking with the moving van owner, he... Read more →

The Entropy of Projects

Entropy is the natural tendency of any system to move from order to disorder in the absence of an external force In project work, the disorder is created by uncertainty. These uncertainties come in two forms. Reducible and irreducible uncertainty.... Read more →

Principles, Processes, and Practices of Project Success

In the project management world, everyone is selling something to solve some problem. This includes product vendors, consulting firms, and internal providers. I'm on the internal provider side most of the time. Other times, I on the consulting firm acting... Read more →

Estimating Accuracy Mathematics

In the estimating business, like many things in project management, there is confusion about principles, practices, and processes. And sometimes even outright misinformation. Here's an example used by the #NoEstimates advocates. Starting in 1986, there is a sentence that says... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“The real value of computers is communication, not computation.” - Natasha Kalatin Read more →

Quote of the Day

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. – Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100 Read more →

Where is the Adult Supervision on this Program?

Most programs I work are in trouble in some form - other wise they would not have hired us to help. One quote we use to describe these situations is What's the difference between this program and the Boy Scouts?... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth. - Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic 1929 When we hear an extraordinary claim, demand extraordinary evidence. Read more →

Operations, Finance, and Accounting for the Development of Software

It's common to hear, projects are overhead, we just need to get the value to the customer as fast as possible. This seems to be a lament from agile developers. Anything getting in the way of the coding is seen... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. - Charles Darwin, Introduction, The... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves. — David Allen, Consultant Since all project work is uncertain, both reducible and irreducible randomness, we need to pay... Read more →

Case Studies versus Ancedotes

It's common in the software development domain, especially agile to provide anecdotes in support for some suggested change to worked good for the person conveying the anecdote. But has not verification that the suggestion works anywhere else Here's some background... Read more →

Misunderstanding Making Decisions in the Presence of Uncertainty (Update Part 2)

There was a Tweet a few days ago from one of the founders of eXtreme Programming, that said... What happens if you shift focus from "accurate estimation" to "reliably shipping by a date"? This quote shows the missing concept of... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Magic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public - E. M. Butler The Myth of the Magus, 1948 When we hear the magic of making decisions in the presence of uncertainty... Read more →

Deploying ERP with Agile

Here's a paper from a prior agile conference that is still applicable today Read more →

Quote of the Day

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Magic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public - E. M. Butler The Myth of the Magus, 1948 When we hear the magic of making decisions in the presence of uncertainty... Read more →

Anecdotes are not Facts nor are They Case Studies

An anecdote is usually a short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident. Anecdotal are sometimes the starting point of a proper investigation, but it is all too often the ending point and every point of a pseudo-investigation. Man... Read more →

Planning before Scheduling

Planning is an unnatural process, it’s much more fun to get on with it. The real benefit of not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by months of worry. ‒ Sir John Harvey... Read more →