Herding Cats

Fallacy of the Week - Use and Misuse of Goodhart's Law

Goodhart's Law states when a feature of the economy is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it. Without a Macro Economics context, the Law is... Read more →

Return of the Swamp Monster (Standish Report)

Some #Noestimates advocates are heard quoting the Standish Report, reporting the non-data date that 60% of IT projects fail and of course that NOT ESTIMATING would have somehow, by some means, through some magical force has saved these projects. And... 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 →

Why Johnny Can't Do The Math

A previous post, Why Johnny Can't Estimate, mentioned some resources for estimating, the principles of business and technical management that demand estimates be made to make decisions, and background on the sources of uncertainty, that create risk, that require estimating... Read more →

Cone of Uncertainty - Revisited

We're writing two chapters in an upcoming Project Management Book, with a working title, The Gower Handbook of Project Performance for Agile, Waterfall and Everything in Between, edited by Mark Phillips. One chapter on the Principles of Risk Management and... Read more →

The #Noestimates Argument from Ignorance †

The conjecture You can make a decision in the presence of uncertainty without estimating the outcome of that decision is an argument from ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantiam that infers the conjecture is true from the fact that it is... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Ignorance is a most wonderful thing. It facilitates magic. It allows the masses to be led. It provides answers where there are none. It allows happiness in the presence of danger. All this, while the pursuit of knowledge can only... Read more →

Modeling the Future Using Empirical Data from the Past

This is a quote from Twitter today that says Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress ... These have proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen... Read more →

Reasons to Estimate and Measure

Estimating Software-Intensive Systems: Project, Products, and Processes, Richard D. Stutzke is a starting point for estimating software projects. From tradition projects to agile projects, this text provides practical examples based on principles. This post is derived from the book, but... Read more →

Microeconomics and Risk Management in Decision Making for Software Development

Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations. Economics has two basis branches: Macroeconomics is... 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 →

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 →

The Psychology of Human Misjudgement

I came across a paper by Charles Munger, Warren Buffet's advisor. His paper "The Psychology of Human Misjudgement." He starts his talk on the same subject with. I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't... Read more →

All Ideas Must Be Critically Examined

The creation of solutions that solve actual problems depends on a critical assessment of those solutions in the context of Principles, Processes, and Practices.When critics do their job properly, the exchange of ideas can take place in a meaningful manner.... Read more →

Book of the Month

It seems of late there is a campaign in the software development community, especially in the agile community where ignorance is a virtue. Ignorance of the microeconomics of decision making. The ignorance that all project work contains uncertainty, that uncertainty... Read more →

Operations, Finance, and Accounting for the Development of Software

It's common to hear, projects are overhead, we just need to get the value to the customer as fast as possible. This seems to be a lament from agile developers. Anything getting in the way of the coding is seen... Read more →

Misunderstanding Making Decisions in the Presence of Uncertainty (Update Part 2)

There was a Tweet a few days ago from one of the founders of eXtreme Programming, that said... What happens if you shift focus from "accurate estimation" to "reliably shipping by a date"? This quote shows the missing concept of... Read more →

Estimates, Forecasts, Projections (Update)

There is a misuse of the terms of statistics and probability in many domains. Politics being one. The #Noestimates advocates are another of the most prolific abusers of these terms. Here are the mathematical definitions. Not Wikipedia definitions. Not the... Read more →

#NoEstimates Book Review - Part 1

I've started reading Vasco's book #NoEstimates and will write a detailed deconstruction. I got the Kindle version, so I have a $10 investment at risk. Let's start with some graphs that have been around and their misinformation that forms the... Read more →

How to Estimate Any Software Problem

The conjecture of #NoEstimates starts with the first Tweet This conjectures - (there are) ... ways to make decisions with No Estimates ... is not founded on any principle of business management, microeconomics of decision making, or principles of probability... Read more →