Herding Cats

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 →

All Conjectures Need a Hypothesis

As far as hypothesis are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he... Read more →

Project Management and the Three Body Problem

Projects are composed of three fundamental elements. Cost, Schedule, and Technical outcomes. The Technical Outcomes go far beyond the PMI-style scope terms. In this paradigm, the technical outcomes are at the end of a chain. Here's examples of that chain... Read more →

When We Say Domain, What's Our Choice?

The current issue of Communications of the ACM, 06/2011, Vol. 54 No. 6 has an articled titled The Profession of IT, Who Are We - Now? There is a table of the professional subdivisions. So where there is discussion of... Read more →

Why Wikipedia is a poor reference source for complex issues

Wikipedia is a pretty good source of information for topics that can be conveyed across a web pages and a small set of references. But you should be always be careful in referencing Wikipedia when entering into the scientific domain.... Read more →

There is always an Average, But It Is Not Always Meaningful

There was a recent post titled there is no "average." From the mathematical point of view, for any two numbers there is always an"average." This possible langauge gap aside, here's the problem with using the term "average." This is probably... Read more →

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Projects

The side discussion of late around Complex Adaptive Systems and their applicability to project work became clear tonight. I attended the University of Colorado lecture series, where Brian Greene spoke on String Theory and his book The Elegant Universe. He... Read more →

Nothing New Under the Sun

The GAO (Government Accountability Office) has recently published papers on the difficulties agencies are having in managing their programs. There is nothing new under the sun. Read Controls Over Consulting- Service Contracts At Federal Agencies Need Tightening, dated 20 March... Read more →

Why Understanding the Principles is Essential for Project Success

The principles of project management have remained unchanged since the begining of time - in spite of some claims that the theory of project management is obsolete. Describe the product or service to be delivered in some form meaningful to... Read more →

The Mis-Misinterpretations of PMBOK

Most of the ragging about PMBOK starts with the misinterpretation of the purpose and content of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. First it is not "The" Body of Knowledge, but "A" Body of Knowledge. Second it... Read more →

Cynics v. Skeptics in Project Management

Much is being written lately about the failures of conventional project management processes. It seems there is a difference thought between the skeptics about these processes (for all the right reasons) and the cynics about these processes (for many of... Read more →

"Magic Beans" or credible alternatives

Please Note is this a Theory Discussion, sparked by a recent post about the soon to be revealed possession of "magic beans" of project management. There's a notion going around these days that the processes and practices of project management... Read more →

Concept of Emergence Fundamentally Flawed

While listening to a lecture from Wayne Wymore - Professor of Systems Engineering, University of Arizona - I came to a new understanding of one of sacred cows of agile development and agile project management - emergence. The requirements emerge,... Read more →

Little's Law

David Anderson's presentation at a recent PMI Orange County Chapter confer fence presentation contains some nice slides about managing software development efforts using agile methods. The ideas of natural and unnatural variation in projects is a point worth restating -... Read more →