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 →

Misinterpretations of the Cone of Uncertainty

The Cone of Uncertainty is a framing assumption used to model the needed reduction in some parameter of interest in domains ranging from software development to hurricane forecasting. This extended post covers The framing assumptions of the Cone of Uncertainty.... Read more →

Complex, Complexity, Complicated (Update)

The popular notion that Cynefin can be applied in the software development domain as a way of discussing the problems involved in writing software for money is missing the profession of Systems Engineering. From Wikipedia Cynefin is... The framework provides... Read more →

The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Complexity and Complex

Our world is complex and becoming more complex all the time. We are connected and in turn driven by a complex web of interacting technology and processes. These interacting technologies and processes are implemented by information and communication technologies that... Read more →

Complex Project Management

There is much confusion in the domain of project management and especially software projects between complexity, complex, and complicated. Wikipedia definitions almost always fall short. The book on the left is the latest addition to this topic in the domain... Read more →

Project Management and the Three Body Problem

Projects are composed of three fundamental elements. Cost, Schedule, and Technical outcomes. The Technical Outcomes go far beyond the PMI-style scope terms. In this paradigm, the technical outcomes are at the end of a chain. Here's examples of that chain... Read more →

The Misunderstanding of Chaos - Again

There is another round of discussion of the Chaos aspects of software development projects and the models of this chaos. The chaotic ones that are totally unpredictable like a double pendulum A double pendulum (two pendulums attached to each other)... Read more →

The Naviety of Solutions to Wicked Problems

In this silly season of national elections, the notion of simple solutions to wicked problem is rampant. The same is true for wicked problems in the project and program management space. Government procurement is a wicked problem. There are always... Read more →

Models

There are the usual reactions to George Box's quote about models... Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. ... to make the wrong headed position that we can't use models for our benefit. Here's a better basis for... Read more →

Shouldn't Complexity Theory and Emergent Systems Start with the Mathematics?

The answer of course is a resounding yes. If we can calculate something we don't have to rely on hand waving, references to populist articles that do their own hand waving, or at least references to dead people who did... Read more →

Another View of Agile

Power to the Edge: Command and Control in the Information Age, speaks to the integration of traditional management with complex systems in the presence of agility, emergence, and variability of the real world. This is a book about managing in... Read more →

Tell Me It Isn't True

When there are statements like this, in the absence of a domain and a context of a domain, it just reinforces why I don't recommend you read any populist books on a topic if you have any skills at all... Read more →

What Does Complexity Acheive?

With all the wrangling around simple systems, avoiding complexity, emergent order out of complexity, we need to ask what does complexity achieve. In a paper titled, Complexity and Robustness J. M. Carlson, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara,... Read more →

Complex Adaptive Systems

When I read something like.. Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning. I get a smile on my face. The populist (like that... Read more →

We need better analogies

Jurgen Appelo has a nice post about the efforts to speed up the change in the management processes. While I don't share their goal for several reasons, it's still a good goal in principle. My experience is that management processes... Read more →

Chaos, Complexity, and Entropy

When we hear about complex systems, chaos and how those systems are models of the domains we work in - software development, people based systems, systems of systems - the paper above may provide somoe insight on the limits of... Read more →