Herding Cats

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 of the Day

If we understand what Capabilities are needed to produce business value or fulfill a mission, we can then identify what technical or operational requirements are needed to deliver those capabilities — Glen B. Alleman This is a closing quote from... 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 →

Podcast Interview

On a recent flight, I met Rory Rowland. Rory is in the Missouri House of Representative, a former CEO of a Credit Union, and a consultant and author. We started talking as well traveled travelers do, sharing backgrounds and current... 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 →

Compendium of Works to Increase Probability of Project Success

Here's a collection of presentations, briefings, journal and conference papers, essays, book content used to increase the Probability of Project Success (PoPS) I've written and applied over my career in the software-intensive system of systems and other domains. These materials... Read more →

Program Management Office Situational Awareness

I'm starting a new engagement next week at the same place I'm working now. It's for the Program Execution Officer for nearly a Billion $ of construction and operations My colleague, Pat Barker, just released a collection of PMO guides... 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 →

Agile for Project Managers

I rarely republish other blogs or presentations. But this one is timeless and needs to be restated at every opportunity. I've corresponded with John over the years. Here's the presentation. As well but John's books. Here's the one we use... 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 →

DDSTOP The Saga Continues

There's been a rash of conjectures about all kinds of bad business, project, and software development (agile and traditional) management ideas of late. Time to update the Don't Do Stupid Things on Purpose (DDSTOP) post. “There’s nothing more dangerous than... Read more →

Project Success

There is an endless discussion on what it means to have project success. Here's a simple and actionable definition The delivery of agreed-upon business, technical, and operational capabilities within established resource (funding, schedule, facilities) constraints. 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 →

Cost and Value Management for Software Development

There's a popular notion going around the agile community that says ... we focus on Value and don't need to worry about Cost. This, of course, is a violation of the principles of Managerial Finance and Microeconomics of software development... Read more →

3 Questions That Must Be Asked at Every Project Management Meeting

I came across a post on Twitter that led me to the blog post 3 Questions You Need to Ask at Your Next Meeting. Please subscribe to their newsletter The three questions are the foundation for any meeting, but they're... Read more →

Decision Analysis - Ordinal and Cardinal Measures

When we hear of the difficulties of making decisions in the presence of uncertainty, especially about software features and capabilities, there are straightforward ways to solve this problem. Decision Analysis is a principle, technique, and application to address complex decisions... 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 →

The CIO's Contribution to Project Failure

IT project failure starts with demanding the project maintain its budget and delivery times in the absence of a Plan to go along with the Schedule of the work. Failure starts with the lack of an adequate description of what... Read more →