Herding Cats

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 →

Quote of the Day

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet - Joseph Jourbet a French moralist and essayist, remembered for his Pensées, published posthumously. A corollary in our software development domain might be he who has practices without principles... Read more →

Making the Impossible Possible

There are many voices on how to manage projects, from traditional to agile. Here's how a large, complex, mission-critical program was managed using the principle of Heliotropic Abundance. I was a participant in the success of this project, through the... 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 →

Resources for #PMChat Talk

I was invited to participate in the Twitter #PMCHAT session today to speak about the principles of Increasing the Probability of Project Success. The #PPChat process is based on asking questions and engaging with those providing answers. Here are the... Read more →

Seven Critical Success Factors of Project Success

Agilely managing projects start with 7 Critical Success Factors. These are based on Seven Drivers Transforming Government, IBM Center for The Business of Government and used in the course I'm teaching Agilely Managing Projects in the Federal Environment, for Stafford... Read more →

All Project Success Starts with Applying Principles

Proactive organizations adopt principles that help them continually achieve targeted outcomes in the presence of uncertainty. There are 10 Principles of Effective project management. I've adopted these principles from a colleague to the domain of project management, where we worked... Read more →

The Practitioner's Handbook of Project Performance

Our two chapters in The Practioner's Handbook of Project Performance: Agile, Waterfall and Beyond, edited by Mark Phillip's Routledge, 2019 is now out. Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 are principles and practices of risk management contributed by me, Tom Coonce,... Read more →

Project Management + Systems Engineering = Increased Probability of Project Success

My workshop for the Project and Program Management Symposium in Canberra this August on the topic of integrating Systems Engineering and Project Management is now complete. The charts are available to the attendees and available here Projects delivered in complex... Read more →

Increasing the Probability of Project Success (PoPS)

All project work, agile or traditional, operates in the presence of uncertainty. There are four fundamental root causes of Project or Program Failure, and their drivers that are addressed by Risk Management and the Estimating processes that go with them.... Read more →

Any Effective Process Must ...

Any effective process must provide the following when searching for the Root Cause of the problem the process is trying to fix OR the Beneficial Outcomes the process is trying to maintain. The process must ... Clearly define the problem... 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

Understanding First Principles is the basis of all understanding - Dr. Kaye Remington, PGCS, Canberra Australia, 14 August 2018 Without first principles, immutable first principles actually, any suggested improvement of anything is just wishful thinking uninformed by any governance, boundary... Read more →

What's Missing from the Agile Software Development Paradigm

Agile software development is framed by a manifesto, a set of 12 principles, several methods. These are all focused on developing software, delivering that software to those paying the developers. There is a fundamental critical success factor missing from this... Read more →

High Integrity, Fail Safe, Software Systems

I was an invited speaker at the University of Colorado, Boulder for an Advanced Embedded Systems Development graduate class. Here are the charts. Starting on Page 29, I was the Software Development Manager for the Tricon. Safe, Reliable, Available, High‒Integrity,... Read more →

Book of the Month

We generally understand a root cause as being the underlying cause of why a particular issue happens. One thing to understand about root cause analysis is it attempts to reveal the hidden causes and effects behind a particular event. In... Read more →

Quote of the Day

We are reminded by the work of Dr. W. E. Deming, the father of modern quality management, in which he demonstrated that the vast majority of quality problems are rooted in processes—ignored, flawed, or misunderstood by the worker, not in... Read more →

Process First Then Outcomes

A 12.12.18 Fast Company article speaks about outcomes resulting from process and the focus on outcomes actually reducing the probability that the outcomes will appear. I've written about this before in Process is King and Process is King Part 2.... Read more →

Managing in the Presence of Risk

Information technology project risk often comes from non-technical aspects of the initiative. Assessing the impact of technology on people, management systems and other initiatives is essential to assure project success. "We automate problems" This department slogan was posted on an... Read more →