Herding Cats

A Compendium of Works to Increase the Probability of Project Success

Here's a collection of presentations, briefings, journal papers and articles, white papers, and essays, used to increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS) I've written and applied over my career in the software-intensive system of systems domain. These materials have... 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 →

The Fallacy of #NoEstimates

There is a Blog Video speaking the #NoEstimates that opens with the following. Let's look at the credibility of each of the statements below: Estimating can be an endemic problem in organisations these days because estimating is fundamentally guessing, yet... Read more →

Project Versus Product in Agile Development

Agree, and focus more on discovery since in *delivery* you have 4 problems: 1. Requirements will change, 2. Requirements are never complete 3. It’s impossible to gather all requirements in beginning 4. You don’t have enough time or $$$ to... 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 →

Value First, Requires Margin and Contingency

There's a popular notion in Agile that says Focus on Value. The principles of microeconomics of decision making in the presence of uncertainty mandates you make estimates of how to achieve that Value in terms of cost and schedule, those... Read more →

Shinny Objectives

Mike Cohn's letter today speaks about distractions from the agreed upon path. About bosses that can't stick to the plan, that change their mind when a new idea comes into their head. Mike suggests: ... you need to make sure... Read more →

Fallacy of the Week

Five Different Decision-Making Strategies That Don't Need Estimates This is a quote from a #Noestimates presentation. Remember, all projects operate in the presence of Uncertainty. If not, it's either a de minimus project, buying things from a catelog, and assemblying... Read more →

Quote of the Day

No plan survives contact with the enemy - Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke (1800 - 1891) This quote is often used by those in the agile community as an excuse for not having a Plan. von Moltke's quote means in... Read more →