Herding Cats

How to Talk About Estimates

https://www.slideshare.net/galleman/paradigm-of-agile-project-managementWhat is an estimate? An estimate as a noun is an approximate calculation or judgment of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something. An estimate as a verb is to roughly calculate or judge the value, number, quantity, or... Read more →

The Premises of Rational Management

Organizational Effectiveness is a basis of rational management. The organization is one of mankind's all-time greatest inventions. An organization is intended to operate as one unit, with all its parts in efficient coordination. But all too often it does not.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away - Philip K. Dick Read more →

Bad Management Behaviours

I belong to an invitation blog for military people. In a recent post, they shared a post from the York Region District School Board, D'Youville College, Aleksandr Noudelman about leadership. This post resonanted with me when I hear about simple... Read more →

#NoEstimates Book - Chapter 1 Summation

I posted some comments on the #NoEstimates book awhile back. I have a break this week and would like to sum up Chapter 1. Chapter 1 Introduction Why estimates don't work - Carmen is assigned a project that will make... Read more →

The Bad Apple Syndrome in Process Improvement

When process improvement starts with the solution, it's common to anchor this improvement on the Bad Apple syndrome. The Dilbert Manager, the bad apple on the team, and another example of starting with the symptom and skipping to the solution,... Read more →

Planning is King

There has been lots of buzz in the project management space lately about the benefits of planning. Planning is one of the Five Immutable Principles of project success. Planning tells us, in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers,... Read more →

Some Dark Sides to Agile

I work agile programs that are subject to FAR 34.2 and DFARS 234.2 These are Software Intensive System of Systems, starting at $20M in some domains and $5M in others and going much larger. Many are household names in space... Read more →

Book of the Month

I've been working in the probabilistic estimating business for a decade or two. One of the seminal books that started it all is Short-Term Forecasting. This is the basis of Box-Jenkins and Mr. Jenkins quote that is universally misquoted by... Read more →

Median, Mean, Mode without Variance is Worthless

Just had a conversation of sorts where it was stated, I look at the median EQF of a portfolio as one gauge of the quality of the overall underlying data. The problem is without the variances of any single point... Read more →

Same Same but Different †

Much of the conversation in social media around agile techniques seems to be based on the differences between the variety of choices of a method, a process, or a practice and definitions of terms for those choices. There seems little... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“If a profession is to sharpen its skills, to develop new skills and applications, and to gain increasing respect and credibility, then theory and practice must be closely related” – Martin Shub When there are practices suggested without principles, those... Read more →

Velocity versus Speed (Update)

Velocity is a speed in a specific direction. Velocity is Distance traveled divided by time in a specific direction. This is defined as a Vector. Speed and Direction. The direction can be a compass heading. A compass heading of an... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Cost estimation is part science, part art. There are many well-defined processes within the cost estimating discipline. There is also a subjective element to cost estimating that makes the discipline an art (NASA, 2004). Read more →

Find Root Cause, Fix It, and Only Then Make Suggestions for Improvement

We hear all the time suggestions for improvement. Or suggestions for outright abandonment of established Processes and sometimes even established Principles. Before listening to any of these and most important making any changes, do a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible - Aristotle, 384... Read more →

Systems Engineering

For non-trivial problems in any domain, Systems Engineering provides a starting framework for identifying problems, assessing possible solutions, implementing those solutions, measuring the performance of the efforts to deliver the solutions and the effectiveness of those solutions. Here's the collective... Read more →