Herding Cats

Presentations, White Papers, and Journal Articles

Conference Briefings, Training Materials, & Master Classes as the Basis of Successfully Managing Traditional & Agile Complex System of Systems Even experienced project managers are not immune to common reasons for project failure. Poor time and budget performance, failure to... Read more →

Compendium of Resources for Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule

The Integrated Master Plan (IMP) is a hierarchical collection of Program Events (PE), with each event supported by Significant Accomplishments (SA), and each SA is based on satisfying Accomplishment Criteria (AC). The Integrated Master Scheule (IMS) is an integrated, networked... Read more →

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 →

Five Immutable Principles of Project Success (A 5 Part Series)

This series of articles provides answers to the questions asked by the five (5) immutable principles of any successful project. Answering these questions is the role of the project management team. What Does DONE Look Like? How Do We Get... Read more →

Presentations from PGCS 2019

This was my second year at the Project and Program Symposium in Canberra Australia. This year's conference focused on the integration of Systems Engineering and Project and Program Performance Management. Here are my talks and a workshop and other papers... Read more →

Phrases Used for Technical Performance Measures

All project progress is measured independent of resources expended - Mr. Gary Bliss, Director Performance Assessment and Root Cause Analysis (PARCA), US Department of Defense The phrases used here are the results of research conducted on behalf of PARCA. No... 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 →

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 →

Quote of the Day

Complex systems usually come to grief, when they do, not because they fail to accomplish their nominal purpose. Complex systems typically fail because of the unintended consequences of their design … I like to think of system engineering as being... Read more →

The Integrated Master Plan Defines what Done Looks Like

My colleague, Pat Barker, is an instructor at the Defense Acquisition University. Pat has produced Practical Advice for Integrated Master Plans. Click on the image below to get started. The resources there will guide you through the development and use... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"I wisely started with a map and made the story fit... the other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities." — J. R. R. Tolkien When we have no map, no Product Road Map, no Integrated Master Plan, no... Read more →

3 Questions That Must Be Asked at Every Project Management Meeting

I came across a post on Twitter that led me to the blog post 3 Questions You Need to Ask at Your Next Meeting. Please subscribe to their newsletter The three questions are the foundation for any meeting, but they're... 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 →

Modeling the Future is the Basis of Project Success

There's a notion going around that ... “I don’t believe you can make a model of a possible future.” This ignores the principles of predictive analytics, and the direct management actions taken to produce outcomes from those analytical models found... Read more →

Quote of the Day

No sensible decision can be made without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it might be — Isaac Asimov To make sensible decisions, in the presence of uncertainty - reducible and irreducible... Read more →

Physical Percent Complete: Knowing When You Are Done

The goal of every program manager is to have a set of practices that connect all the programmatic planning, risk, and performance information in a single unified view needed to support the decisions that increase the probability of success of... Read more →

Integrated Master Plan - Revisited

Designing, building, testing, and deploying complex systems is fraught with risk. And as always risk comes from uncertainty. And uncertainty comes in two forms - reducible (Epistemic) and irreducible (Aleatory). Much has been written about the sources of risk and... Read more →

Building the "Perfect" Schedule

I'm working on a presentation and discussion for the Joint Space Cost Council that is happening in September. Our topic is about the integration of multiple IPT (Integrated Product Teams) and how to coordinate all the work into an Integrated... Read more →

From Mission Capabilities to Done

No matter the project domain or the technical development method, project success is dependent on knowing what Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision maker. These measures are: Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) – are the operational... 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 →