Herding Cats

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 →

Book of the Month

All project work operates in the presence of uncertainty. Uncertainty comes in two forms on projects and product development. Reducible uncertainty (Epistemic) and Irreducible uncertainty (Aleatory). There is a 3rd kind of uncertainty - Ontological - which is unknowable -... Read more →

Quote of the Day

We aren't really bad at estimating. What we are really bad at is enumerating all the assumptions that lie behind our estimates. ― Paul Rook, from his keynote on risk management, European Conference on Software Methods, London, October 1994. If... Read more →

Quote of the Day

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Folly Loves the Sound of His Own Voice When we hear unsubstantiated claims, without evidence or principle and point those out and then receive condemnation, it's an age response to this quote Only principled based foundations can be the foundation... Read more →

Quote of the Day

You can't run a credible business or your own household without knowing your basis of cost and the cost demand in the future. In the presence of reducible and irreducible uncertainties, that cost basis and the value produced or acquired... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Risk Management is essential for development and production programs. Information about key project cost, (technical) performance, and schedule attributes is often uncertain or unknown until late in the program. Risk issues that can be identified early in the program, which... Read more →

Quote of the Day

So we keep asking, over and over, Until a handful of earth Stops out mouths ― But is that an answer? Heinrich Heine, Lazarus, 1854 Many in our project management domains have a solution looking for a problem to solve.... Read more →

The Economics of Strategy

It's a popular phrase in the agile community to speak about value. And to use this notion as the basis of decision making around tools, processes, and delivered software. Trouble is when we hear words like estimates provide no value,... Read more →

Epistemic and Aleatory Uncertainty Creates Risk to Project Success

There are two types of uncertainty on projects: Aleatory known as objective, stochastic, or irreducible. Epistemic known as subjective, state-of-knowledge, or reducible. Aleatory uncertainty is related to random variables. The intrinsic random nature of the phenomena occurring during the development... 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 →

Quote of the Day

An individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once. By all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan All we do, everything we encounter, all actions taken on any project ever executes, we encounter... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Worked a $20B Manned Space Flight program a few years ago, when called in to help with getting back on schedule. The Finance Manager (CFO of the Program) opened the kickoff meeting with ... What's the difference between our program... Read more →

Quote of the Day

In the space of two days, I had evolved two plans, wholly distinct, both of which were equally feasible. The point I am trying to bring out is that one does not plan and then try to make circumstances fit... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Agile is about inspecting and adapting, but most of the things that will get in our way during Transformation are actually knowable up front. And those real, knowable constraints are often what make organizational change difficult. - Mike Cottmeyer Agile... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Probabilities direct the conduct of the wise man. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Book 1, chap. 5, sec. 12 When you hear that you can make decisions in the presence of uncertainty WITHOUT estimating the impact of that decision, the Greeks... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Solum certum nihil esse certi The only certainty is uncertainty Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, Bk ii, 7 All projects operate in the presence of risk which is created by uncertainty. Uncertainty comes in two forms. Reducible (Epistemic) and Irreducible... Read more →

The False Logic of No Estimates

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... Read more →