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 →

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 →

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 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 →

Deconstructing the Hertz and Accenture Debacle

A recent lawsuit by Hertz Rental Car against Accenture has turned into a rallying cry by Agilest and No Estimates advocates. Of course, No Root Cause analysis has been performed by these advocates, but it makes good click bait for... Read more →

What's Missing from the Agile Software Development Paradigm

Agile software development is framed by a manifesto, a set of 12 principles, several methods. These are all focused on developing software, delivering that software to those paying the developers. There is a fundamental critical success factor missing from this... Read more →

Managing in the Presence of Risk

Information technology project risk often comes from non-technical aspects of the initiative. Assessing the impact of technology on people, management systems and other initiatives is essential to assure project success. "We automate problems" This department slogan was posted on an... 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 →

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 →

An Incremental Paradigm

We were speaking at Homeland Security yesterday on Agile development in the Federal Government and there was a senior director who brought up a paradigm that resonated with me. The infrastructure for enterprise IT has a critical impact on the... Read more →

Principles of Project Success

Projects produce products, services, solutions. Projects deliver capabilities that fulfill Missions and Vision, Projects are a vehicle to accomplish and outcome. Projects collect nonrecurring costs in exchange for that produced value. Every project should have a goal, an objective, and... Read more →

Agile Project Management Methods

There is a lot of unsubstantiated claims going around about how agile should or should not be applied. How estimates are or are not needed. How the team should or should not be managed. From the point of view of... Read more →

Estimating Processes in Support of Economic Analysis

On any project with significant Value at Risk Economic Analysis provides visibility to the data needed for decision making. This Value at Risk paradigm is a critical starting point for applying all processes of decision making. The choice of decision... Read more →

The Customer Bought a Capability

Customers buy capabilities to accomplish a business goal or successfully complete a mission. Deliverables are the foundation of the ability to provide this capability. Here's how to manage a project focused on Deliverables. Deliverables Based Planning from Glen Alleman These... Read more →

Impact Mapping and Integrated Master Planning

In the literally 1,000's of pieces of correspondence I receive or send monthly, I came in contact with Impact Mapping, Gojko Adzic. At the same time I got an email from a person I met while speaking at last weeks... Read more →

Capabilities Based Planning and Development

The Death March project starts when we don't know what DONE looks like. Many of the agile approaches attempt to avoid this by exchanged not knowing for budget and time bounds. In the enterprise IT domain, those providing the money,... Read more →

Don't Start With Requirements Start With Capabilities

Lot's of myth floating around about requirements elicitation and management. Starting with requirements is not how large, complex, mission critical DOD and NASA programs work. Start with Capabilities. This cna be directly transferred to Enterprise IT. Here's a map of... Read more →

Do It Right or Do It Twice

I heard this phrase in a conference call yesterday with a DOD client and thought, how clever I'll write a blog about this. Only to find out there is a Forbes article with same name and several other articles as... Read more →