Herding Cats

Presentations, White Papers, and Journal Articles

Conference Briefings, Training Materials, & Master Classes as the Basis of Successfully Managing Traditional & Agile Complex System of Systems Even experienced project managers are not immune to common reasons for project failure. Poor time and budget performance, failure to... Read more →

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 Capabilities Based Planning

Capabilities-Based Planning is planning, under uncertainty, to provide capabilities suitable for a wide range of business challenges and circumstances, while working within an economic framework. Capabilities-based Planning emphasizes flexibility, adaptiveness, and robust capabilities, implying a modular building-block approach to Enterprise... Read more →

Increasing the Probability of Program Succes

Cost and schedule growth for any project or program is created when there are: Unrealistic technical performance expectations, Unrealistic cost and schedule estimates, Inadequate risk assessments, and Unanticipated technical issues, all based on poorly performed and ineffective risk management. Each... 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 →

Strategies to Detect, Prevent, and Correct Causes of Project Stress and Failure

From yesterday's How to Think Like A Scientist, which spoke to encountering and countering, claims with no evidence, here's what was going to be a Master Class at PGCS 2020, but was canceled because of Covid. Hoping we'll be in... 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 →

Resources for #PMChat Talk

I was invited to participate in the Twitter #PMCHAT session today to speak about the principles of Increasing the Probability of Project Success. The #PPChat process is based on asking questions and engaging with those providing answers. Here are the... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning (Wright Brothers)

Capabilities Based Planning provides a description of what Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers. These measures include Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) - Operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the... 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 →

Modeling Fault-Tolerant Computing

While working from home, I decided to clean up my document server. One of the documents laying around for years was my Master's Thesis This thesis was written in support of a Master's Degree in Systems Management. Which at the... Read more →

Capabilities-Based Planning

Over the years, the success rate of traditional project management methods applied to software development projects has been underwhelming. Capabilities–Based planning provides a defined outcome that is not a conclusion but lays the groundwork for the continued delivery of value.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Here's some quotes from Damon Hancock, Samsung Australia, speaking about the challenge of big infrastructure at PGCS 2018 Pick your partner well. Bad partners bring bad fortune. Some uncomfortable conversations today will save much pain later. Context drives behaviour. Inadequate... 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 →

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 →

A CIO Contribution to Project Failure

The failure starts with demanding the project to 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 →

Capabilities Based Planning

Over the years, the success rate of traditional project management methods applied to software development projects has been underwhelming. These traditional methods are based on a retrospective approach that measures variance against plan rather than providing a performance–forecast that can... Read more →

Presentations from PGCS 2019

This was my second year at the Project and Program Symposium in Canberra Australia. This year's conference focused on the integration of Systems Engineering and Project and Program Performance Management. Here are my talks and a workshop and other papers... Read more →