Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

No scientist or engineer will fail to recognize the well-known syndrome of an experiment that refuses to work in the face of upper management. How to Predict the Unpredictable: The Art of Outsmarting Almost Everyone, William Poundstone, 2015 Read more →

Quote of the Day

“If you’ve been in the acquisition business at all over the last 20 years, you realize we already have a broken program. We just don’t know where. Because nothing in the acquisition business ever delivers exactly on time [and] exactly... Read more →

Principles of Project Success

Projects produce products, services, solutions. Projects deliver capabilities that fulfill Missions and Vision, Projects are a vehicle to accomplish and outcome. Projects collect nonrecurring costs in exchange for that produced value. Every project should have a goal, an objective, and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. Albert Einstein, in The Tao of Systems Engineering: An... Read more →

Quote of the Day

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. − Harrington... Read more →

Quote of the Day

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a... Read more →

Just a Reminder About Estimating Software Projects

Here's a clear and concise discussion of the estimating topic. And just a reminder for making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. Read more →

Quote of the Day

Management of Software Development projects is not like a Rocky movie, where strong desire overcomes lack of skill, experience, and talent. Skill, experience, tools, principles, processes, practices and talent are all needed to increase the probability success. Not understanding that... Read more →

Quote of the Day

While management and leadership are related and often treated as the same, their central functions are different. Managers clearly provide some leadership, and leaders obviously perform some management. However, there are unique functions performed by leaders that are not performed... Read more →

Book of the Month

The Death of Expertise describes how established knowledge is challenged and why this is critical in our modern society. With nearly unlimited access to information - the information age - we've become narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarians. Everything from webMD... Read more →

Misinterpretations of the Cone of Uncertainty

The Cone of Uncertainty is a framing assumption used to model the needed reduction in some parameter of interest in domains ranging from software development to hurricane forecasting. This extended post covers The framing assumptions of the Cone of Uncertainty.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Under the current imperfect administration of the Universe, most new ideas are false, so most ideas for improvement make matters worse Read more →

Decisions Without Estimates?

There is a posted question at an agile conference. Can you make a decision without an estimate? Like many discussions in the domain of agile, the statement is made without any evidence that it is true, nor can even be... Read more →

The Smell of Dysfunction and Corrective Action

When we hear about some dysfunction in our work, a product, a system - Root Cause Analysis can provide the corrective action needed to remove the dysfunction and most importantly prevent the dysfunction from returning. There are Eight Questions needed... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Have a roadmap instead of a road - Adrian Bolboaca Without the map, we can't know if we're on the right road. But the map is not the terrain, so both are needed for success. Read more →

Math for the Day

Performance-Based Project Management®

Successfully managing projects, no matter the domain, the size, the development or engineering method starts with a set of Principles, Practices, and Processes. Here are those Principles and Practices. The Principles are Immutable. The Practices are universal. The Processes need... Read more →

The Five Laws of Software Estimating are Wrong

There's a blog post from a few years back that has resurfaced The 5 Laws of Software Estimates. It's one of those posts that's heavy on opinion and light on principles. Time to revisit this ill-informed idea on why, what,... Read more →

Five Immutable Principles of Project Success Requires Estimating

There are Five Immutable Principles of Project Success. Each question requires an answer with sufficient confidence to make decisions about spending other people's money, that increases the probability of project success. All project work is probabilistic (actually statistical and probabilistic),... Read more →

The Economics of Decision Making on Software Projects

The classic paper “Software Engineering Economics,” Barry Boehm, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol SE-10(1), 1984, pp. 4-21. opens with a dictionary definition of economics as a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production distribution, and... Read more →