Herding Cats

The Fallacy of Wild Numbers

DeMacro made this post, which has been picked up by the agile community to mean estimating is a waste. My early metrics book, Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimation (Prentice Hall/Yourdon Press, 1982), played a role in the way... Read more →

12 Principles of Agile with and without Estimates

It's popular to speak about the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Principles of Agile. When we hear that the next big thing in agile is Not Estimating, let's look to see how those 12 Principles can be applied without those... Read more →

Definition of Done

The common definition of the Definition of Done in agile software development is (mostly from the Scrum Alliance and other official Scrum sites): A simple list of activities (coding, comments, unit testing, integration, release notes, design documents, etc.) that add... Read more →

Managing in Presence of Uncertainty

Let's say you're the project or program manager of a large complex system. Maybe an aircraft, or a building, or an ERP system deployment. Your project is valued in the 100's of millions of dollars. Or say your project is... Read more →

Software Development for the 21st Century

Alistair Cockburn's talk on 21st Century Software development. Pay attention the hoax of #Noestimates and most major misunderstandings of the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Principle Read more →