Recently I was talking with a company that has achieved the level 3 (defined) CMMI from the Software Engineering Institute that provides a measure of an organizations maturity and capability.  During this conversation, I had a flash to another company that had aspirations of being a level 3 but could never make it beyond their […]

Risks and Risk Management We continue with our series on the taxonomy of failures in project knowledge areas  looking at risk management. In this case turning our breakdown of the project failures toward risk management.  Risk management is fundamental to project management as we reduce or navigate the potential impediments to the success of our […]

Risk and Time Management In keeping with our last post, we discuss risks due to insufficient time management that often result in project failures.  As is with many things, the symptom of the failure has roots much earlier.  In other words, when we witness the failure, it was due to some event(s) or activities much […]

We have recently posted how assumptions, left unquestioned can damage a project. It is similarly true for the product when we use models and simulation to generate our product.  In the course of building these models, we will know some things for certain.  Some attributes of the model we may think we know for certain […]

Below is an excerpt from our book, Project Management of Complex and Embedded Systems for those that believe the “V” model means single pass product development (as if) – think again!  This book has a significant automotive perspective, complex, highly tooled machines that must meet and government regulations.   Embedded Development Overview[1] Embedded software development […]

  Why Statistics and Control Are Important to the Project Manager More from the TQM and Project Management [1] One of the purposes of statistical analysis lies in its ability to discern random variation from non-random (or “controllable”) variation. Random variation is extremely difficult to control, although we have seen situations where variance could be […]

Introduction We continue our Total Quality Management for Project Management and the PMO.  TQM can help us with the planning of the project giving us some measure of historical performance from which we can learn. However, it is not just the planning that can be aided by TQM, but also the strategy we intend to […]

Below is an excerpt from our book, Total Quality Management for Project Management[1] Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot […]

We take a brief turn from our previous agile posting and divert to Total Quality Management tools applied to conventional Project Management with an excerpt from our book by that title. Consider our company has outsourced a significant portion of our project to a supplier, and in our evaluation of the risks via our Risk […]

Product development work has variation brought on by the product, as well as the organization.  Though there are many approaches out there, prescriptions that are based upon the type of organization or the type of product.  These approaches may have some relevance but ultimately things are not so easy to allow a prescription, “take two […]