Poor Process or Poor Execution I have used both conventional approaches to projects, as well as agile. In fact, i have used some of the agile techniques in conventional projects with success. I know, anecdotal but perhaps an interesting anecdote. Conventional projects have had considerable high failure reported (Standish Group Studies for example). The problem […]
What does not work -duration Besides wasting time planning out many months into the future as if we could see and control that far ahead, there have been studies over the years that have established an inverse correlation between the length of time a project runs and project success rate. Perhaps this does not sound […]
(Lexington, NC, September 28, 2018) – Cognitive biases are always at work, playing dirty tricks behind our perceptions. Jon M. Quigley, Founder and Principal, Value Transformation, will address this issue in his latest presentation, “Things that Secretly Sabotage your Project and Team” to be held on Thursday, October 4, 2018 from 07:00 pm to 07:50 […]
Instead of No Estimates Instead of no estimates, we should consider adjusting our approach to estimates that eliminate the abuse, and still allows for the answers to the business questions, “does this project improve our bottom line” allowing the business to determine if the company really wants to undertake the project, and if so, do […]
Estimating and Business Case Our last post explored the abuses of estimates. I thought it best to recognize the abuses, thinking acknowledging these thoughts from the no estimate crowd, may make them amenable to a discussion of how other see the problem and perhaps, eventually, a movement toward a solution that all find acceptable. Individuals […]
I would like to start off with has anybody seen an appropriate study of estimating when it comes to doing the work? Not a study that already knows the conclusion they want, but an actual scientific study. The thoughts below are not based upon anything like that but, having seen many estimating boondoggles. I have […]
Clues! Signals! Below is the result of a collaboration with John Cutler. He posted a document on Google Docs, and I liked the outline so much I felt compelled to post my thoughts In fact, it was surreal adding my contents to the Google docs and John coincidentally showed up on line, at the same […]
Team Building Phases Teams are not as easy as throw our collection of individuals into a room together and bang, thus is a team created. We are fond of the description of the steps a team will go through by Bruce Tuckman we list below. Our experience suggests this list to be a reasonable list of the […]
I had a brief chat with Tom Cagley of the famous SPaMcast the other night about teams. We periodically take time to talk about product development topics, and I frequently appear on SPaMCast podcasts. Last night we talked about teams an whatever magic makes a collection of individuals move to the point of performing better than the […]
I recently spoke at a PMI Chapter in Ballantyne event, well, I say spoke at but we really played a game of planning poker. We divided the group up into groups of four (that is how many suits per deck). There were 5 groups, and I supplied the prompt from which all responses were generated. As expected,the initial prompt produced […]