Herding Cats

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 →

How to Think Like a Scientist

A book in my library The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist rings true in our time of SAR-COV-2 pandemic when I encounter not only blatant science deniers, along with the climate deniers but just the... Read more →

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 →

Book of the Month

In our current political turmoil, as well as project management and software development turmoil, claims are made - sometimes wild unsubstantiated claims - of how to NOT do something, how some process can fix your problems, without ever stating what... Read more →

How Do Projects Fail? Let Us Count the Ways

Poor initial requirements definition ― failure to start with Capabilities and only then deriving the requirements. These Capabilities are assessed in Measures of Effectiveness and Measures of Performance Poor performance and cost trade-offs during development ― with the Measures of... 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 →

Book of the Month

From the dust jacket. Uncertainty is a given in project management - and it can make the project manager's job pretty complicated. Anything can change at any time - even the ultimate objective. That's why master project managers are turning... 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 →

Applying Project Control Processes to Agile Development Projects

Known Success Factors From Government Research For Aerospace And Defense Programs Are Augmented With Agile Development Good Practices And The Enablers Of These Good Practices. Good Practices and Enablers of Good Practices, based on a report from Comptroller and Auditor... 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 →

The Conscious Competence Learning Model

The Conscious Competence Learning Model has four stages. Each learner must pass through each stage to progress from incompetence to competence. This model is useful in understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The four stages of competence are: [1] Unconscious incompetence. The... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If we start with what we think is a valid number, we will tend to continue with that number. When in fact, we should speak only in terms of confidence intervals and probabilities of success - Sir Francis Bacon In... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The Mastery of Risk distinguishes modern times from the past: By understanding and measuring risks and their consequences, modern humans no longer perceive the further as a whim of the Gods and thereby have been empowered to transform their world... 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 →

Project Management + Systems Engineering = Increased Probability of Project Success

My workshop for the Project and Program Management Symposium in Canberra this August on the topic of integrating Systems Engineering and Project Management is now complete. The charts are available to the attendees and available here Projects delivered in complex... Read more →

Lessons Learned from the Columbia Disaster (Update)

This week I taught a 4-day course on Progressive Concepts in Program Management at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. One of the workshops used the NASA Columbia accident as an example (NASA report calls these things mishaps). This... Read more →

The Aha! of the Day

I was watching a YouTube on Why Scaling Agile Doesn't Work and How to Fix It when I had my Aha! moment about some in the Agile community that makes statements that don't make sense in my domain. I work... 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 →

Quote of the Day

The man who grasps principles can successfully handle his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is sure to have trouble — Ralph Waldo Emerson So Just Remember ... There is no principle by which you can make... Read more →

Agile Stories are Actually Requirements

It's popular in the agile community to speak about User Stories and how they are Not requirements. As a System Engineer, here's some background on Systems Architecture and Requirements Engineering. Let's start with some background about Systems and their engineering.... Read more →