Herding Cats

Presentations, White Papers, and Journal Articles

Even experienced project managers are not immune to common reasons for project failure. Poor time and budget performance, failure to deal with complexity, and uncontrolled changes in scope can catch any project manager off guard. This collection of materials can... Read more →

Podcast Interview

On a recent flight, I met Rory Rowland. Rory is in the Missouri House of Representative, a former CEO of a Credit Union, and a consultant and author. We started talking as well traveled travelers do, sharing backgrounds and current... Read more →

From Strategy To Execution and Delivery

There always talk about Focus on Value. But that does that mean? What are the units of measure of Value? What does it Cost to deliver that Value? When will that Value be delivered? When is that Value Needed to... Read more →

Principle Based Management

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. If it disagrees with Principles, it’s wrong. - Richard Feynman In that simple statement is the key to Principle Based Management of Other People’s money. † Most business departments have a set... Read more →

Decisions Without Estimates?

There is a posted question at an agile conference. Can you make a decision without an estimate? Like many discussions in the domain of agile, the statement is made without any evidence that it is true, nor can even be... Read more →

Business Dysfunction, Malfunction and Strategy

Mike Cottmeyer posted This is an interesting article that misses the point of what's going on. Companies have too much management because they are poorly architected and not organized around value producing assets. When you don't have sufficient encapsulation, you... Read more →

Connecting Project Benefits to Business Strategy for Success

The current PMI Pulse titled Delivering Value: Focus on Benefits during Project Execution provides some guidance on how to manage the benefits side of an IT project. But the article misses the mark on an important concept. This is a... Read more →

Successfully Implementing Change

Two Critical Videos for Agile Transformation. Here's Part 1 Here's Part 2 So when we hear estimates are the smell of Dysfunction - what are the actionable outcomes needed to address these dysfunctions? To date there have been ZERO suggestions.... Read more →

Strategy is Not the Same as Operational Effectiveness

It is common to confuse strategy with operational effectiveness. The strategy for Information Technology (IT) projects contains three major themes. These form the foundation of the IT Strategy as well as the tactical processes that will be deployed in support... Read more →

Impact Mapping and Integrated Master Planning

In the literally 1,000's of pieces of correspondence I receive or send monthly, I came in contact with Impact Mapping, Gojko Adzic. At the same time I got an email from a person I met while speaking at last weeks... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning and Development

The Death March project starts when we don't know what DONE looks like. Many of the agile approaches attempt to avoid this by exchanged not knowing for budget and time bounds. In the enterprise IT domain, those providing the money,... Read more →

How to Deal With Complexity In Software Projects?

In a previous post on How to Assure Your Project Will Fail, the notion that the current project management processes are obsolete and the phrase of dealing with complexity on projects is a popular one in the software domain. By... Read more →

Elements of Project Success

There's a continuing discussion on LinkedIn and Twitter about project success, the waste of certain activities on projects, and of course the argument without end on estimating the cost of producing the value from projects. It's really a argument without... Read more →

We Can Know the Business Value of What We Build?

In a recent post titled #NoEstimates - Really? there was an interesting comment. Clearly, the business value of any feature or project can not be known with much certainty in advance of it being implemented. Still, for the purpose of... Read more →

Back To The Future

The discussion (of sorts) on Twitter around "no estimates" - what ever that actually means, since there is no definitive description other than exploring - brings me back to my core program management, project management, writing software for money, designing... Read more →

A Seat At The Table

In a conversation on Twitter with Sridhar, there was mention that product development software projects are different than internal IT projects. And that how they are run is much different as well. This may be the case. It's not been... Read more →

What Is Strategy?

There is a discussion of sorts on LinkedIn about project management and competency that moved to the notion of strategy and how PMs are connected to strategy. Lots of diverse opinions. Many have suggested strategy for project based organizations is... Read more →

End-to-End Delivery of Business Solutions

The delivery of "business solutions" depends on many things. But it starts with knowing and then producing the needed capabilities for success. Capabilities provide defined outcomes that are not a final conclusion, but the basis for continued assessment of value... Read more →

All Projects Must Have a Strategy for Success

All projects must have a strategy for success. This is not the strategy for building the product - although that is a must have as well. It is the strategy for the outcomes of the project. It is the set... Read more →

The Need for Strategy

The pursuit of operational effectiveness is seductive because it is concrete and actionable. Caught up in the race for operational effectiveness, many managers simply do not understand the need to have a strategy. – Dr. Michael E. Porter – Professor... Read more →