In preparation for our trip to Eindhoven University of Technology to lecture on Configuration Management, we provide a brief excerpt on the evolution of the horseless cariage. Traditionally new market segments open due to the need to solve a problem. Such problems may be real as in the case of the environmental crisis solved by […]

My Career I have been very fortunate in my career, and that really means very lucky.  Upon graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I had two job offers after sending my resume to more than 100 companies.  That is not a very good yield, but it would be good enough.  I selected […]

Value, Scope and Change Requests Change requests are part of any development project.  Change requests are sometimes necessary as we learn by building and doing the work.   In my experience, change requests often are born from requirements we thought we understood, only to learn by working with the product or system that we really did […]

Queuing Theory Queuing theory is the study of waiting lines and is associated with business in determining resources needed to achieve service business throughput objectives, but it does not just apply to services and material handling. Queuing Theory and Billable Hours I have worked at companies that had a target for billable hours, that well […]

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 […]

Variation! Though sometimes we may refuse to recognize it, the world is a full of variation, even in the things we think or believe are constant. For example, my wife has been known to say, “you always do…” or “you never do…”, to which I retort, I am human and I am not that repeatable.  […]

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 […]