Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

Geniuses are the luckiest of the mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do, even if their genius is unrecognized in their lifetime, the essential earthly reward is always theirs, the certainty... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Better have a plan to reduce technical and programmatic uncertainty (both of which have aleatory and epistemic behaviours respectively) at a planned rate, for a planned cost, on a planned time. Or plan on being late, over budget, and reduced... Read more →

Quote of the Day

According to Teller, the master magician of Penn and Teller fame, magic is best conceived of as "a form of theatre that depicts impossible events as though they were really happening". One sure magic trick is making decisions in the... Read more →

Why Having a Dataset "may" be Necessary but is Far from Sufficient to Support a Position

In the agile world, people have datasets from their projects, their friends projects, or made up projects. They use these datasets to support some position. Ranging from Story Points don't work, the Cone of Uncertainty is a hoax, all projects... Read more →

An Incremental Paradigm

We were speaking at Homeland Security yesterday on Agile development in the Federal Government and there was a senior director who brought up a paradigm that resonated with me. The infrastructure for enterprise IT has a critical impact on the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to... Read more →

Deconstructing The Cone of Uncertainty

The paper on the Cone of Uncertainty is used by many in the No Estimates community as an example of why estimates are of little use, since uncertanty is not reduced. It's not reduced in the paper, because no specific... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Here's a quote I'm thinking about — “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question:... Read more →

Developing Leadership Skills

There is always some post about leadership, innovation, and personnel development around agile project management, Having deployed one of the early agile development programs (eXtreme Programming) in a mission critical IT organization, I was part of an approach that is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Before we build a better mousetrap, we need to find out if there are any mice out there. - Yogi Berra Read more →

Pi Day (Again)

22/7 =3.14285714286 Read more →

Three Leadership Tips from Jack Sparow

Captain Jack Sparrow, started as a supporting character to Orlando Bloom’s Wil Turner. He then outshone the ostensible hero and became an archetype unto himself. Here are three Leadership Tips from an INCOSE presentation "We Need More Jack Sparrow, Savvy?... Read more →

Why Johnny Still Cannot Estimate

He doesn't know how - He doesn't understand how estimates fit into the process of business and managerial finance of product or service development. He looks for existing examples and just sees bad examples. He doesn't understand why estimates are... Read more →

Quote of the Day

You cannot know the value unless you know the cost to acquire that value Focusing on Value alone and Ignoring the cost to acquire that Value, leads to disappointment when you discover you paid too much, for too little, too... Read more →

What is an Estimate? What is Estimating?

I work in a domain where estimates are made every single week. Estimate to Complete (ETC), Estimate at Completion (EAC), Estimated Completion Date (ECD) are the life blood of our software intensive system of systems programs. To the left is... Read more →

A Notion Misused, But Likely Never Read

In the There are a few topics in the agile world that are the stalking horses for the agile advocates. One is The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylorism is tossed around like Water Fall, as the source... Read more →

GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide Applied to Agile

The GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide has 12 steps. These describe the increasing maturity of the project's artifacts. They are not specific to Agile Software Development. But here's how they are connected They are not specific to Agile Software... Read more →

Estimating Tools and Resources (Updated)

Tools and resources for cost and schedule estimating, when you here estimates are hard, we're bad at estimating, estimates are a waste, estimates are misused. All those statements are fallacies. Learn first... There is NO means of making credible decisions... Read more →

Use and Misuse of Statistics of Process Improvement Studies

There are several studies on how software development can be improved by applying various process. Some studies have very large data sets, with analysis of each process and the differences between the processes. Other studies have small data sets, no... Read more →

Quote of the Day

There is no good way to perform a software cost-benefit analysis, breakeven analysis, or make-buy decision without some reasonably accurate method of estimating software costs and their sensitivity to various product, project, and environmental factors - Barry Boehm Read more →