Herding Cats

Compendium of Works to Increase Probability of Project Success

Here's a collection of presentations, briefings, 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 have been presented... Read more →

Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects

In a recent exchange in social media, it was clear the notion of risk and the sources of risk, the consequences or risks and managing in the presence of risk was in very unclear, when it was conjectured, we can... Read more →

Quote of the Day

But to us, probability is the very guide to life - Bishop Joseph Butler (1756) Read more →

Quote of the Day

Expert judgment is typically the crux of cost and schedule estimates but in the spectrum of the risk management process, quantification of expert judgment is the weakest area - Fred Raymond, Acquistion Review Quarterly - Spring 199., pp. 147-154 Making... Read more →

Quote of the Day - Risk Pre-Mortem

A risk management premortem is an approach where the project manager and project stakeholders envision a future where the project has failed, and then work backward to determine the story and circumstances that could have led to the project failure... Read more →

Quote of the Day

"I wisely started with a map and made the story fit... the other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities." — J. R. R. Tolkien When we have no map, no Product Road Map, no Integrated Master Plan, no... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Most Risk Management, starting with PMI's paradigm, is focused on what if. Instead, Risk Management must focus on If Then and work to reduce or remove the IF before focusing on the THEN. This is the Pre-Mortem paradigm of Risk... Read more →

Beyond the Risk Register

Risk Management starts with a collection of risks. Their probability of occurrence, the probability the risk will unfavorably impact the project. Then some risk handling process is needed to reduce the impact of the risk, or reduce the probability that... 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 →

Six Steps of Risk Management

Risk Management has six steps: Planning risk management - decides how to approach and plan the risk management activities for the project. Identifying the Risks - determines with risk are likely to affect the project and documenting the characteristics of... 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 →

Quote of the Day

"Uncertainty management is not just about managing perceived threats, opportunities, and their implications; it is about identifying and managing all the many sources of uncertainty that give rise to and shape our perceptions of threats and opportunities. It implies exploring... Read more →

Why Johnny Can't Do The Math

A previous post, Why Johnny Can't Estimate, mentioned some resources for estimating, the principles of business and technical management that demand estimates be made to make decisions, and background on the sources of uncertainty, that create risk, that require estimating... Read more →

Quote of the Day

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer What does that mean? Each of us has our limits. For some, the limit is in the seeing, for others,... Read more →

Modeling the Future is the Basis of Project Success

There's a notion going around that ... “I don’t believe you can make a model of a possible future.” This ignores the principles of predictive analytics, and the direct management actions taken to produce outcomes from those analytical models found... Read more →

Connecting "What" with "How" - and the Failure to Understand the Principles of Systems Engineering and Systems Management

It's been said by an agile voice that ... Progress and value delivery are not the same thing. In the end, of course, value (to someone) is important. And in the standard-for-today structure of programming for money, we divide what... Read more →

Quote of the Day

No sensible decision can be made without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it might be — Isaac Asimov To make sensible decisions, in the presence of uncertainty - reducible and irreducible... Read more →

Don't Be Fooled

This is a new Category on Herding Cats that comes from my finishing of the book Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics, Gary Smith. Of late I've encountered many people on the web... Read more →

Quote of the Day

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope wth them,... Read more →

Is There an Underlying Theory of Software Project Management?

Here's a paper that has been under constant development for several years now and is headed to a Journal and part of an upcoming book chapter. The motivation for the paper started when there were claims made the somehow agile... Read more →