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...
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There's a way to do business capability identification without planning, so we don't need planning, we just need flow. A self-proclaimed agile leader made this recent statement about how planning is not needed, all we need is flow - whatever...
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There are a lot of logical fallacies in today's software development world. Good logic it seems is hard to come by. Here's two simple known-to-work logic principles Modus ponens - If A is true, then B is true. When A...
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There's a popular meme on social media that goes ...just count the number of stories, instead of Story Points that's all you need to estimate a software development project. That's an OK idea if several things are in place. But...
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There's an old legal aphorism that goes, If you have the Facts on your side, Pound the Facts. If you have the Law on your side, Pound the Law (or Principles). If you have neither Facts nor Law (or Principles)...
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When Space and Defense crashed in the late 1970's in Southern California, I was fortunate to move to another domain and work for a person and his firm where I learned much about process safety management. I came there from...
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You can make an estimate - one that is better than chance would produce - of how many children have been born into a Dutch or Danish family by counting the storks' nests on the roof of their house. In...
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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...
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Expose an Irrational Belief, keep a person rational for a day Expose Irrational Thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime Dr. Bo Bennett, in Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of 300 Logical Fallacies Some in the agile community, when...
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I'm continually building the bibliography for our Software Intensive Systems of Systems work activities and found in "A review of Agile Software Effort Estimation Methods" It lists Traditional Methods Expert Judgement Analogy Price-to-Win, Bottom-Up, and Top-Up Wideband Delphi Algorithmic methods...
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Wrong does not cease to be wrong just because the majority share it - Leo Tolstoy When we hear cockamamie ideas being tossed around and lots of supporters of those ideas, and those ideas are clear violations of established principles...
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You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there. —Yogi Berra The notion of some in the agile community that Planning is a waste, just start coding and you'll discover the...
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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...
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“Risk Management is Project Management for Adults” - Tim Lister The only way there is no Risk is when there are No Uncertainties, either reducible (Epistemic) or irreducible (Aleatory). All software development projects have uncertainties in one of these two...
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There is a Blog Video speaking the #NoEstimates that opens with the following. Let's look at the credibility of each of the statements below: Estimating can be an endemic problem in organisations these days because estimating is fundamentally guessing, yet...
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In Software Value of something is totally unrelated to Cost This is a popular fallacy in the #Noestimates advocates vocabulary. Let's look at the principles of cost, price, and value to the customer from the point of view of the...
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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...
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There's a fallacy used by some in the software development business, that estimates are not needed to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty. It turns out, of course, this can only be true if the world we live in...
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There is NO Principle of Managerial Finance, Probabilistic Decision Making, or Microeconomics of Software development, in the presence of uncertainties found on all projects, by which a credible decision can be made without estimating the impact of that decision on...
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Uncertainty exists and cannot be reduced or eliminated in complex systems. Estimation only gives you a false sense of certainty that can only be validated when it is too late to react (e.g. Estimating Fallacy), i.e. After the Fact. This...
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