Herding Cats

Compendium of Works to Increase Probability of Project Success

This collection of presentations, briefings, journal and conference papers, essays, and book content has been used to increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS) written and applied over my career in the software-intensive system of systems and other business and... Read more →

Compendium of Blog Posts on Agile Software Development

In software development, agile is a set of practices intended to improve the effectiveness of software development professionals, teams, and organizations. It involves discovering requirements and developing solutions through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer/end... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Working together to accomplish great things will always be a part of the human experience and success depends on our people skills and individual courage to confront group consensus.—Irving Janis When we hear about self-organized teams and team consensus, and... Read more →

The Naivety of 5 Why's (Updated)

There are many approaches to Root Cause Analysis: [1] Events and Causal Factors Change Analysis Barrier Analysis Tree Diagrams Why-Why Chart Pareto Story Telling Fault Tree Failure Mode and Effects Analysis The Why-Why approach or the 5-Whys created by Sakichi... Read more →

A Solution Looking for a Problem To Solve

We see solutions being sold everywhere. From household cleaners to complex software management processes and tools But would you go to your favorite hardware store and buy a tool, because there was a salesman at the front door demonstrating a... Read more →

How to Think Like a Scientist

A book in my library The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist rings true in our time of SAR-COV-2 pandemic when I encounter not only blatant science deniers, along with the climate deniers but just the... Read more →

History of Rocky Flats

While cleaning up the office this week, I found a book on the History of Rocky Flats. I worked as VP Program Management in the Information, Communications, and Technology organization, where we used PeopleSoft ERP to manage the efforts of... Read more →

Quote of the Day

There’s a big difference between knowing how to follow a recipe and knowing how to cook. If you can master the first principles within a domain, you can see much further than those who are just following recipes. - Julia... Read more →

Agile Development Processes? Pick Your Domain First

The use of Agile Processes in many software domains is straight forward. Start with some notion of what Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers, start developing Features, get feedback from the Users, iterate on the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Project Management is a system for attaining a targeted output or result with the assistance of a group of people within a scheduled time frame and a "not to exceed" budget - Abdul Malek Tushar in Managing Projects. Any claims... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Agile is about inspecting and adapting, but most of the things that will get in our way during Transformation are actually knowable up front. And those real, knowable constraints are often what make organizational change difficult. - Mike Cottmeyer Agile... Read more →

Thought of the Day

The notion that Agile Development can be successful without Project Planning and Controls is only true when the project is de minimis. A de minimis project, means any variance in the cost, schedule, and technical performance of the deliverables has... Read more →

What We Knew in the 1940's About Managing Projects

In Bent Flybjerg's book there is a chapter by Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch (Google both for good solid papers and books on project management) describing how projects were managed in the 1940's. The Manhattan Project, Atlas launch vehicle, Polaris... Read more →

Capabilities-Based Planning is Foundation of All Project Success

The foundation of all project success starts with a Capabilities‒Based Plan. What Capabilities does the project need to produce to accomplish the Mission or Fulfill the business strategy for those paying for the work? Without knowing that, along with the... Read more →

Eliciting Capabilities

All project success starts with knowing what done looks like in unitys of measure meaningful to the decision makers. These units start with effectiveness and performance. These Capabilities are the foundation of defining the technical and operational requirements of the... Read more →

Seven Critical Success Factors of Project Success

Agilely managing projects start with 7 Critical Success Factors. These are based on Seven Drivers Transforming Government, IBM Center for The Business of Government and used in the course I'm teaching Agilely Managing Projects in the Federal Environment, for Stafford... Read more →

Applying Project Control Processes to Agile Development Projects

Known Success Factors From Government Research For Aerospace And Defense Programs Are Augmented With Agile Development Good Practices And The Enablers Of These Good Practices. Good Practices and Enablers of Good Practices, based on a report from Comptroller and Auditor... Read more →

The Practitioner's Handbook of Project Performance

Our two chapters in The Practioner's Handbook of Project Performance: Agile, Waterfall and Beyond, edited by Mark Phillip's Routledge, 2019 is now out. Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 are principles and practices of risk management contributed by me, Tom Coonce,... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The Mastery of Risk distinguishes modern times from the past: By understanding and measuring risks and their consequences, modern humans no longer perceive the further as a whim of the Gods and thereby have been empowered to transform their world... Read more →

Function Points and Software Development Estimating

The ISO/IEC 141143-6:2012 Standard for functional size measurement Productivity Measurement of software projects. There are five functional size measurement methods in compliance with ISO/IEC standards. NESMA function points (ISO/IEC 24570) IFPUG function points (ISO/IEC 20926); COSMIC function points (ISO/IEC 19761)... Read more →