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 →

Management Principles

When I worked at Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS), for Kaiser-Hill (Joint Venture for the National Nuclear Security Agency) who was the prime contractor for $7B of nuclear weapons plant clean up (I was a VP of Program Management... 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 →

Project Management According to Yogi Berra

There are many, almost unlimited examples of project management guidance. Here's Yogi Berra's advice Planning - You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going because you might not get there. Communicating - I didn't really... Read more →

Compendium of Resources of Mathematics for Project Management

This page is dedicated to the resources of the mathematics needed to successfully manage software-intensive systems and their related hardware and work processes when applying traditional and agile product development methods. These Books, Papers, and Thesis and other resources -... Read more →

Program Management Office Services

Just watched a webinar on Increasing Program Management Office Collaboration to Improve IT Portfolio Management from www.qsm.com. Here's a summary of how we've installed and operated Progam Management Offices in a variety of domains, from Federal Agencies to commercial firms... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Regard the engineering system as having the same criticality as that of the system being engineered. - Robert John Halligan The result of this paradigm is Process is King. If we don't have the proper process, the resulting engineered system... 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 →

Can This Really Be True?

The self-proclaimed leading voice of PM 2.0 says... Traditional project management software applications, like MS Project, were created to support the waterfall project management style and are file-based. All the data on different projects are stored in various disconnected files... Read more →

Resources for Managing Complex System of Systems

Project Performance Management using Earned Value Management and systems-based development processes, including Agile Software development, have much in common. Most important is progress to plan measured by Physical Percent Complete with tangible evidence of working products at the end of... Read more →

Book of the Month

From the dust jacket. Uncertainty is a given in project management - and it can make the project manager's job pretty complicated. Anything can change at any time - even the ultimate objective. That's why master project managers are turning... Read more →

What We Knew in the 1940's About Managing Projects

In Bent Flybjerg's book there is a chapter by Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch (Google both for good solid papers and books on project management) describing how projects were managed in the 1940's. The Manhattan Project, Atlas launch vehicle, Polaris... Read more →

Without a Road Map, We're Driving in the Dark With The Lights Off

For project success we need to know if we're on the right path to Done and we need meaningful measures of progress to the plan. We must measure the increasing maturity of the Deliverables and their Value to the customers... Read more →

Four Root Causes of Project Failure

In a previous blog, Root Causes of Project Failure, there were four root causes from research at the Institute for Defense Analyses. In that Blog there were measures missing. Here's the details of those measures, defined in the Technical Measurement... Read more →

Five Immutable Principles of Project Success

What Does Done Look Like In Units Of Measure, Meaningful To The Decision Maker? Know where we are going by defining “done” that will arrive at some point in the future. In this future, Stakeholders acquire the Capability to accomplish... Read more →

Some Timeless Advice

The way to success is... First, have a definite, clear, practical idea - a goal, and objective Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, material, and methods Third, adjust your means to that end - Aristotle... Read more →

How Projects Go Bad - No Matter the Domain, Method, or Tool

Project failure is not only common, it's predictable. The root causes of Project Failure are well documented and corrective and preventive actions are also well known. Let's start with the four primary root causes of project failure. ‡ Unrealistic Performance... Read more →

Some Timeless Advice

Most of what we know today, apply today, was known by the Greeks, including these lessons † Lead from the front ‒ According to ancient Greeks, if you want your team members to give their 100%, then you will have... Read more →

Applying Project Control Processes to Agile Development Projects

Known Success Factors From Government Research For Aerospace And Defense Programs Are Augmented With Agile Development Good Practices And The Enablers Of These Good Practices. Good Practices and Enablers of Good Practices, based on a report from Comptroller and Auditor... Read more →