Herding Cats

Project Versus Product in Agile Development

Agree, and focus more on discovery since in *delivery* you have 4 problems: 1. Requirements will change, 2. Requirements are never complete 3. It’s impossible to gather all requirements in beginning 4. You don’t have enough time or $$$ to... Read more →

Fallacy of the Week

Five Different Decision-Making Strategies That Don't Need Estimates This is a quote from a #Noestimates presentation. Remember, all projects operate in the presence of Uncertainty. If not, it's either a de minimus project, buying things from a catelog, and assemblying... Read more →

Fallacy of the Week

Instead of estimating User Stories, ask: how might we change this story so that we deliver working software tomorrow? While delivering working software daily is good development practice - what does it mean deliver? Can the customer accept working software... Read more →

Wilo's Law and Mature Communications Processes

A popular quote in the agile community is Wilo's Law. It's one that states hey it's not my fault no one understands me, Wilo's Law says... How all human communication fails, except by accident Wilo claims human communication fails because... Read more →

Separation of Concerns and Agile Development

Here's a notion that is popular in the agile community from the @agilefant tweeter feed. This notion appears when corporate governance is not part of the conversation. The role of governance is to define the decision rights of the participants... Read more →

Cone of Uncertainty and Estimate to Complete and Estimate at Completion

In a recent twitter exchange, a formula was presented that goes like this, from the Original Post Rewriting this into algebra in LaTeX gives us Let's see if we can unpack the equation: The total uncertainty is the ratio of... Read more →

Increasing the Probability of Program Success

We're working on a White Paper for the Joint Space Cost Council which is an organization composed of government (NRO, NASA, USAF, and others) and industry representatives with an interest in space. Our topic is Increasing the Probability of Program... Read more →

Fallacy of the Day

"On spec" is open loop control on value. Project Controls are Management Actions, either preplanned to achieve the desired result, or taken as a corrective measure prompted by the monitoring process. Project controls are concerned with the metrics of the... Read more →

Integrated Master Plan - Revisited

Designing, building, testing, and deploying complex systems is fraught with risk. And as always risk comes from uncertainty. And uncertainty comes in two forms - reducible (Epistemic) and irreducible (Aleatory). Much has been written about the sources of risk and... Read more →

Building the "Perfect" Schedule

I'm working on a presentation and discussion for the Joint Space Cost Council that is happening in September. Our topic is about the integration of multiple IPT (Integrated Product Teams) and how to coordinate all the work into an Integrated... Read more →

The Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management

Mike Cohn, one of my favorite blogger's and author's, made a post awhile back about Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management. With some posts this week on twitter about not needing project management or estimates to be... Read more →

Concept of Operations

In the agile community, there is always some comment or opinion about how hard it is to define what the requirements are. How we can't possibly estimate the work since all the work is emergent. If this were the case... Read more →

4 Fallacious Reasons Why We Estimate and Why Those Are Fallacious

There's a recent post titled Four Fallacious Reasons Why We Estimate. It lists the usual suspects for why those spending the money think they don't have to estimate how much they plan to spend when they'll be done producing the... Read more →

From Mission Capabilities to Done

No matter the project domain or the technical development method, project success is dependent on knowing what Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision maker. These measures are: Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) – are the operational... Read more →

Risk Management in Five Easy Pieces, with Apologies to Jack

Managing Cost, Schedule, & Technical Performance Risk Is The Basis Of Good Project Management. Risk management is essential to the success of any significant project. Certain information about key project cost, performance, and schedule attributes are often unknown until the... Read more →

GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide Applied to Agile

The GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide has 12 steps. These describe the increasing maturity of the project's artifacts. They are not specific to Agile Software Development. But here's how they are connected They are not specific to Agile Software... Read more →

Agile Project Management Methods

There is a lot of unsubstantiated claims going around about how agile should or should not be applied. How estimates are or are not needed. How the team should or should not be managed. From the point of view of... Read more →

Five Immutable Principles of Project Success

No matter the size of the project. No matter the project domain. No matter the engineering processes used to produce the outcomes from the project. There are Five Immutable Principles of project success. These principles are Immutable because they are... Read more →

How to Talk About Estimates

https://www.slideshare.net/galleman/paradigm-of-agile-project-managementWhat is an estimate? An estimate as a noun is an approximate calculation or judgment of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something. An estimate as a verb is to roughly calculate or judge the value, number, quantity, or... Read more →

Principles, Processes, and Practices of Project Success

Principles are timeless. Practices and Process are Fads. A Principle a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning. A Practice is an application or use... Read more →