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 →

Quote of the Day

This is the true joy in life, the being recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish... Read more →

Management Principles

When I worked at Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS), for Kaiser-Hill (Joint Venture for the National Nuclear Security Agency) who was the prime contractor for $7B of nuclear weapons plant clean up (I was a VP of Program Management... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Military officers are by their very nature generalists who are required to apply a set of commonly accepted management techniques and leadership principles to an unending parade of situations in an equally limitless set of disciplines and circumstances. The constant... Read more →

The Problem of Management Education

The book The Heretic's Guide to Best Practices: The Reality of Managing Complex Problems in Organizations, has been sitting on my bookshelf for sometime. In our work from home condition I decided to read it. I randomly turned to Page... Read more →

Darwinian Truth and Reality in Software Development Management

Jordan Peterson put forth the idea that “empirical” truth (e.g. the Earth is a sphere) is all well and good, but if that truth runs contrary to information that will allow you to spread your genes then it stops being... 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 →

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 →

Value, Cost and Business Decision Making

In Software Value of something is totally unrelated to Cost This is a popular fallacy in the #Noestimates advocates vocabulary. Let's look at the principles of cost, price, and value to the customer from the point of view of the... 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 →

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 →

Separation of Concerns and Agile Development

Here's a notion that is popular in the agile community from the @agilefant tweeter feed. This notion appears when corporate governance is not part of the conversation. The role of governance is to define the decision rights of the participants... Read more →

Fallacy of the Day

"On spec" is open loop control on value. Project Controls are Management Actions, either preplanned to achieve the desired result, or taken as a corrective measure prompted by the monitoring process. Project controls are concerned with the metrics of the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. - Bruce Lee But do this within establish governance frameworks, principles of microeconomics of decision making and managerial finance. It's probably not your money and... Read more →

Fallacy of the Day

Requirements, as traditionally used, are a separation tool. To separate the "thinkers" from the "doers". In software this is a HUGE mistake! This conjecture is a fallacy. The purpose of requirements elicitation, use, and implementation of the requirement that result... Read more →

Nothing Happens Without A Reason

When we see things happen, we attribute them to a reason. Not just basic observations in life, but observations on projects, and all the way down to the basics of ontology. If we observe certain things and those things behave... Read more →

The Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management

Mike Cohn, one of my favorite blogger's and author's, made a post awhile back about Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management. With some posts this week on twitter about not needing project management or estimates to be... Read more →

Three Leadership Tips from Jack Sparow

Captain Jack Sparrow, started as a supporting character to Orlando Bloom’s Wil Turner. He then outshone the ostensible hero and became an archetype unto himself. Here are three Leadership Tips from an INCOSE presentation "We Need More Jack Sparrow, Savvy?... Read more →

Capabilities Release or Cadence Release

Business runs on deadlines and milestones for a simple reason - Time is Money Those paying for the development of a product or service have an expectation that they will get the value from their investment on some date in... 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 →