Herding Cats

What Are Story Points and How Can They Be Used on Agile Projects?

The development of software, using other peoples money (OPM) means - or should mean - that those providing the money have an expectation to know How Much Money, along with When well you be done spending that money and provide... Read more →

Any Effective Process Must ...

Any effective process must provide the following when searching for the Root Cause of the problem the process is trying to fix OR the Beneficial Outcomes the process is trying to maintain. The process must ... Clearly define the problem... Read more →

Velocity in Agile

Velocity is a term used on agile development to assess How Fast are we producing software. Here's one definition from agile glossary Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a Team can tackle during a single Sprint and... Read more →

Agile Stories are Actually Requirements

It's popular in the agile community to speak about User Stories and how they are Not requirements. As a System Engineer, here's some background on Systems Architecture and Requirements Engineering. Let's start with some background about Systems and their engineering.... Read more →

Deconstructing the Hertz and Accenture Debacle

A recent lawsuit by Hertz Rental Car against Accenture has turned into a rallying cry by Agilest and No Estimates advocates. Of course, No Root Cause analysis has been performed by these advocates, but it makes good click bait for... Read more →

Compendium of Works to Increase Probability of Project Success

Here's a collection of presentations, briefings, journal and conference papers, essays, book content used to increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS) I've written and applied over my career in the software-intensive system of systems and other domains. These materials... Read more →

What's Missing from the Agile Software Development Paradigm

Agile software development is framed by a manifesto, a set of 12 principles, several methods. These are all focused on developing software, delivering that software to those paying the developers. There is a fundamental critical success factor missing from this... Read more →

Agile for Project Managers

I rarely republish other blogs or presentations. But this one is timeless and needs to be restated at every opportunity. I've corresponded with John over the years. Here's the presentation. As well but John's books. Here's the one we use... Read more →

DDSTOP The Saga Continues

There's been a rash of conjectures about all kinds of bad business, project, and software development (agile and traditional) management ideas of late. Time to update the Don't Do Stupid Things on Purpose (DDSTOP) post. “There’s nothing more dangerous than... Read more →

Cost and Value Management for Software Development

There's a popular notion going around the agile community that says ... we focus on Value and don't need to worry about Cost. This, of course, is a violation of the principles of Managerial Finance and Microeconomics of software development... Read more →

Agile Project Management Principles - Moving from Principles to Practices

“Only those general principles and attitudes that result from clear and deep understanding can provide a comprehensive guide to action.” [1] Agile Program Management contains practices found in traditional program management, delivered through the principles of agile. For the traditional... Read more →

People Versus Process

At the program level and above, the choice of a people focus or a process focus is not between two competing paradigms. They are two sides of the same coin. People are the raw material for teams, for not only... Read more →

The CIO's Contribution to Project Failure

IT project failure starts with demanding the project maintain its budget and delivery times in the absence of a Plan to go along with the Schedule of the work. Failure starts with the lack of an adequate description of what... Read more →

Connecting "What" with "How" - and the Failure to Understand the Principles of Systems Engineering and Systems Management

It's been said by an agile voice that ... Progress and value delivery are not the same thing. In the end, of course, value (to someone) is important. And in the standard-for-today structure of programming for money, we divide what... Read more →

Why Johnny Can't Estimate? (Update)

I work in a domain where engineered systems are developed for complex software-intensive system of systems. These systems are engineered with a variety of development methods. Ranging from traditional to agile and combinations in between. These systems are developed for... Read more →

Don't Be Fooled

This is a new Category on Herding Cats that comes from my finishing of the book Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics, Gary Smith. Of late I've encountered many people on the web... Read more →

Enterprise Scrum Development Process Flow

Here's how we write software for money, on a deadline, with a mandatory set of Capabilities and Features that implement those Capabilities. This process flow has been applied in a wide range of technical and business domains. From enterprise IT... Read more →

Project Management of Product Development

There's a popular fallacy in the agile community of products over projects. This, of course, is based on the lack of knowledge of Managerial Finance, Systems Engineering and Product Development principles and processes. Here's a chart from an upcoming meeting... Read more →

Software Intensive System of Systems

The domain I work in is categorized as Software Intensive System of Systems (SISoS). In this domain, we applied traditional program and project management methods for cost and schedule management at the top level. This means a Capabilities Based Plan... Read more →

Black Swans

One of the books used by a vocal No Estimates advocate is Black Swans by Nassim Taleb. This advocate continually confuses Macroeconomics of financial markets and sovereign finance with Microeconomics of software development. They are not the same, the processes... Read more →