Herding Cats

Lean Startup, Innovation, #NoEstimates, and Minimal Viable Features

The ideas of Lean Startups, Innovation, #NoEstimates development, and Minimal Viable features are all the rage. Many times all the rage by people who have never been in a start-up, had to produce Saleable Viable Features to make the revenue... Read more →

Process Improvement In A Complex World

Much of the discussion around making improvements in processes fails to address the governance aspects of a business or organization. Instead it focuses on the personal aspects. Agile development of a software team, without the corporate impacts. The desire to... Read more →

Showing Up On Time, On Budget, With Needed Capabilities

Software development ranges from straight forward, with small a team with a continuous improvement effort. Say a web site or warehouse management application were the customer is happy to just keep the improvements coming. Every improvement or new feature can... Read more →

A Seat At The Table

In a conversation on Twitter with Sridhar, there was mention that product development software projects are different than internal IT projects. And that how they are run is much different as well. This may be the case. It's not been... Read more →

One of the Problems with Emergent Design

Unless we know what capabilities we need at the end of the project, and know those somewhere near the beginning of the project, have a Plan to produce those capabilities at the needed time for an anticipated budget, we're going... Read more →

All Value Production Is Time Phased

When the phrase we focus on producing value for the customer is used, there is a concept missing. Most customers need or expect that value to arrive on-time and over-time. In other words receiving the value from the project all... Read more →

Managing In The Presence Uncertainty

All projects operate in the presence of uncertainty, that's the reality of project work. There is no way around it. Either we deal with it - manage in the presence of uncertainty - or ignore it - and get managed... Read more →

Quote of the Day

The creation of strategy resembles Penelope's web - beautiful loom work by day, unraveling at night -- Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesman, and Leadership in Wartime in Command in Air War: Centralized Versus Decentralized Control of Combat Airpower,... Read more →

Complex Problems Require Better Solutions

There is a class of responders on the forums that continue to seek simple and simple minded solutions to complex problems. Claiming the problems can be solved with simple solutions. Of course those solutions cannot be demonstrated with any credibility... Read more →

What Is Strategy?

There is a discussion of sorts on LinkedIn about project management and competency that moved to the notion of strategy and how PMs are connected to strategy. Lots of diverse opinions. Many have suggested strategy for project based organizations is... Read more →

Strategy, Tactics, and Execution

The Afterburners has a seminar titled High Resolution. Their tag line is Without high resolution, an organization can not align its tactics and strategic plan. High resolution details ensure the organization can execute and provide results that align with the... Read more →

Books PMs Should Read and Put To Use

There are several shelves of books about many topics in our house. Project Management and related topics are in the Office. The list of books below have specific attributes. They have not only been read, they have been marked up,... Read more →

The Need for Strategy

The pursuit of operational effectiveness is seductive because it is concrete and actionable. Caught up in the race for operational effectiveness, many managers simply do not understand the need to have a strategy. – Dr. Michael E. Porter – Professor... Read more →

Strategy and Execution Go Hand In Hand

Pat Mayfield has a nice post on Strategy and execution of strategy. Since the word Strategy is misused many times, let's start with a defintion used in the Balanced Scorecard world, focused on IT functions. A strategy is a hypothesis... Read more →

Connecting Business Strategy to Project Execution

There is much talk in the PM space about the connections or lack of connections between business strategy and the day to day activities of projects. There is a simple - a long active approach to this we use every... Read more →