Herding Cats

Modeling the Future Using Empirical Data from the Past

This is a quote from Twitter today that says Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress ... These have proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Despite our ever-connective technology, neither Skype nor Facebook — not even a telephone call — can come close to the joy of being with loved ones in person. - Marlo Thomas Read more →

Fixed Price Removes Risk — Fallacy of the Week

Some acquisition policies express a strong preference for fixed-price contracts in contracting. Firm-fixed-price contracts are depicted as existing on the extreme left of the continuum of risk. As we progress through the various fixed-price flavors and into cost-type contracts, the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want. - Niklaus Wirth Read more →

The Nature of Complexity

Many factors contribute to project complexity, from "Is building construction, as a social project organization and production system, complicated or complex?" Chao Xiao and José L. Fernández-Solís, Uncertainty about the product of the project Uncertainty about the scope of the... Read more →

Reasons to Estimate and Measure

Estimating Software-Intensive Systems: Project, Products, and Processes, Richard D. Stutzke is a starting point for estimating software projects. From tradition projects to agile projects, this text provides practical examples based on principles. This post is derived from the book, but... Read more →

Small Batch Sizes are NOT Risk Management

There is a popular fallacy in the Agile community that small batch sizes are Risk Management. What small batches do is provide information that informs risk management at a fast rate. Small batch sizes answer the question... How long are... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A few centuries earlier ... humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it - C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters Yeah, well, you know,... Read more →

All Software Projects are Non-Deterministic

Here's a time series from one of the advocates of #Noestimates showing the number of stickies processed on a weekly basis. This chart is used to conjecture that decisions can be made using emperical data from the past. Trouble starts... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew." - Herb Caen Related articles Architecture -Center ERP Systems in the Manufacturing Domain IT Risk Management Why Guessing is not Estimating and... Read more →

Microeconomics and Risk Management in Decision Making for Software Development

Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations. Economics has two basis branches: Macroeconomics is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

And judged we are. After all, God didn't give Moses "The Ten Suggested," he gave Commandments; and if I'm a free agent, my first reaction to a command might just be that nobody, not even God, tells me what to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week – General George S. Patton Read more →

Antifragile, Macro and Micro Economics and the Misuse of Terms (Again)

The Buzz Word Anti-fragile is tossed around lately by #NoEstimates advocates claiming that making estimate creates fragility to the work. Let's start with a definition of anti-fragile ... Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Finance is a pure information processing game. A lot of people in the business are doing things that should be done by computers - David Shaw Managerial Finance and Microeconomics of decision making in the presence of uncertainty is the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we must do is to know what books have treated of... Read more →

Book of the Month

On Bullshit is a classic tale of how our culture is full of bull shit at every turn. Our project management, software development world the more so. How people make stuff up, misuse concepts, misquote out of context, and other... Read more →

Quote of the Day

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo... Read more →