Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain one's own or anyone else's - Justin Kruger and David Dunning, in "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The estimator’s charter is not to state what developers should do, but rather to provide a reasonable projection of what they will do. – T. DeMarco, Controlling Software Projects, Prentice Hall PTR, 1982. This quote is from the paper "Quantifying... Read more →

Start with the End in Mind

The notion - a fallacious notion - that done will emerge, is common in some circles of Agile and especially those agile advocates proferring No Estimates. The Greeks and Romans had a good understanding of most things we take for... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther King Read more →

Quote of the Day

This axiom often attributed to Albert Einstein about the definition of insanity. As it turns out, insanity might be crediting this quote to Einstein over and over again. He never said it. While the tongue-in-cheek definition may or may not... Read more →

Lessons Learned from the Columbia Disaster

This week I taught a 4-day course on Progressive Concepts in Program Management at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. One of the workshops used the NASA Columbia accident as an example (NASA report calls these things mishaps). This... Read more →

Quote(s) of the Day

“I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger “We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your... Read more →

You Can Not "Control" Projects

The #NoEstimates are right you can not Control projects. All projects, no matter the domain, processes, or technology, operate in the presence of uncertainty - reducible (Epistemic) and irreducible (Aleatory). The only thing that can take place is to Manage... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The last 10 percent of the technical performance development generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the of problems - Norm Augistines 15th Law Using the NASA definition, Margin is the difference between the maximum possible value and the... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion - Robert Heinlein Any conjecture, that any fix, for some claimed problem or dysfunction, without numbers to support the claim a fix for the dysfunction will... Read more →

Value Theory for Projects and Estimating

No Value can be determined without knowing something about the cost to produce that Value and the Time that Value will be arriving. † In the presence of uncertainty, this knowing must be estimated to some acceptable level of confidence.... Read more →

Quote of the Day

If speculative ideas cannot be tested against established principles to assess their validity, they are not credible. They don't even rise to the level of being wrong - Wolfgang Pauli Read more →

Quote of the Day

Just exactly what is it we manage on projects if not risks? Project management IS risk management. The risk-aware manager can show you a substantial list of causal risks. He/she can tell you the likely cost in time or money... Read more →

Predicting the Unpredictable (A Book Review)

I came to this book with an anticipation of a coherent discussion of estimating on modern software development projects. The subtitle is Pragmatic Approached to Estimating Project Schedule and Cost, says I'd find practical advice on how to estimate software... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Risk is the Effect of Uncertainty on Objectives These uncertainties come in two forms: Reducible (Epistemic) and Irreducible (Aleatory). Managing in the presence requires making estimates of the magnitude and impact of these uncertainties. To conjecture that decisions can be... Read more →

When a Wise Man Points at the Moon, The Fool Looks at the Finger

When we hear any conjecture that a tool or a process, or NOT doing something will fix a recognized problem, I'm reminded of the Chinese phrase to the left, recorded in Chan Buddhist scripture When a Wise Man Points to... Read more →

What Are Story Points and How Can They Be Used on Agile Projects?

The development of software, using other peoples money (OPM) means - or should mean - that those providing the money have an expectation to know How Much Money, along with When well you be done spending that money and provide... 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 →

Quote of the Day - Business Runs on Estimated Values

You can't run a credible business or even your own household without knowing your cost basis for its operations and the demand for future expenditures. In the presence of uncertainties in the business and for your house for that cost... Read more →