Herding Cats

Monte Carlo Simulation

Estimation is part of project management. The most important estimates for the project manager are related to time and cost. And remember you're High School Economics class - The Value of something cannot be determined alone, you need to know... Read more →

Mathematics for Engineering and Software Development

When we encounter engineering problems that are beyond the de minimis category, they usually involve some form of mathematics. Probability, Statistics, Measurements, Calculus and the like. Here's a collection of downloadable books that can be the resources needed to address... 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 →

Quote of the Day

I know not why I am so sad - Antonio, at the beginning of The Merchant of Venice Our brains have been designed from evolution to make calculations about possible futures. This is called deciding. When this deciding takes place... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs. Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts... Read more →

Biases in Project Management and How to Remove Them

There is always lots of complaining about the biases introduced into managing projects and making the estimates needed to make project decisions. In Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow there are three biases. † Cognitive bias - a mistake in reasoning,... Read more →

Quote of the Day

I do not define Time, Space, Place and Motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation, they bear to sensible objects. And... Read more →

Why Estimates are Needed for Success in the Nondeterministic Universe

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... 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 →

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 →

Antifragile, Macro and Micro Economics and the Misuse of Terms (Again)

The Buzz Word Anti-fragile is tossed around lately by #NoEstimates advocates claiming that making estimate creates fragility to the work. Let's start with a definition of anti-fragile ... Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to... Read more →

Monte Carlo Simulation

There was a tweet yesterday ... In casinos, the betting rules ensure the house wins (Eliminates Risk) over time This, of course, is not true, nor is it how casinos work. Let's start with a brief overview of Monte Carlo... Read more →

Fallacy of the Week

Five Different Decision-Making Strategies That Don't Need Estimates This is a quote from a #Noestimates presentation. Remember, all projects operate in the presence of Uncertainty. If not, it's either a de minimus project, buying things from a catelog, and assemblying... Read more →

Quote of the Day

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality they are not certain; and as fast as they are certain, they do not refer to reality - Albert Einstein All project work operates in the presence of uncertainty. Aleatory... Read more →

Principles of Cost and Schedule Estimating

One of the 4 summary root causes of project performance failures is Unrealistic Cost and Schedule Estimates based on inadequate risk-adjusted growth models. This assessment comes from research at the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org), where I sometimes work as... Read more →

Fallacy of the Day

Estimation is pretentious rationalism, where rationalism does not serve us well (extremistan)(sic) Take only risks you can survive. Pretentious rationalism is defined as a type of ultimate explanation—announced at one time as final truth—which is termed a system. This is... Read more →

Resources for Cone of Uncertainty

Cone of Uncertainty describes the evolution of the amount of uncertainty during a project. The planned uncertainty not only needs to decrease over time passing, but this reduction diminishes any impacts of risk on the decision-making processes. Seems there is... Read more →

Book of the Month

Network Science addresses a topic popular in the agile community but addressed with little or no mathematical foundation. The book describes topics in network and the complexity of network from physics to computer science, engineering, economics and the social sciences,... Read more →

Behavioural Economics, Estimating, and Decision Making in Presence of Uncertainty

Behavioral Economics studies the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and organization and the consequences of prices, returns, and resource allocation, of the impact of different kinds of behavior, in different environments... Read more →

Little's Law - Use, Misuse, and Sometimes Simply Wrong Ideas

Systems amenable to Little's Law looks like this Inputs can be a discrete or continuous flow of work arriving for service in the System. The System is a general concept that defines the boundary for all the work activities that... Read more →