Topics
- Earned Value Management (RSS) (12)
- Estimation and Pricing (RSS) (14)
- Older Topics (RSS) (32)
- Agile Software Development (RSS) (16)
- News (RSS) (16)
- People Skills (RSS) (12)
- Understanding ourselves (RSS) (2)
Sorry about old comments
Most old comments, from before the conversion to WordPress, have unfortunately been lost. (Very sorry!!) I lost them when Haloscan (who I was using for comments) shut down their service. As it happens, there weren’t a large number of comments on any of the pages that used Halscan commenting, possibly… Read more
Does our intuition fail us?
Why do so many projects seem to be OK, but, when you get near the end, they turn out not to be OK after all? Everyone thought you were going to make the target date, but at the last minute… well, no you couldn’t.
I’d like to suggest an answer. … Read more
Agile Roots Presentations Online
Presentations from the Agile Roots conference are now online.
My full presentation is here, although sometime I hope to isolate the middle section (on workplace interpersonal skill) so it can be viewed as a stand-alone 15-min presentation. [Done] As it stands, the presentation is 30 minutes on
References from my Agile Roots presentation
At Agile Roots, I promised to post references for my talk “Better Agile Through Stealing”. Here are my faviourite references on the topics I talked about. For each of the books, the main link is to a “dead tree” version of the book, with a secondary link to… Read more
Speaking at Agile Roots
The Agile Roots conference is on, next month in Salt Lake City. If you haven’t checked out the conference web site, hurry over there now!
If you like this blog (and presumably you do, since you’re reading it ;-) I think you’ll love the conference. It’s a new… Read more
Agile Charts Part II – The EVM Perspective
I was recently invited to write an article on agile-style EVM charts for Software Tech News, a publication of the US Department of Defense. The audience was the traditional EVM community within the DoD, so I wrote the article from a traditional EVM perspective. By way of background,… Read more
Fallible estimates + Competition = Winner’s Curse
Some time ago Steve McConnell and I had an interesting debate, via his blog. I suggested that when we combine estimates such as those we have in software (which have high uncertainty early in the project) with a competitive market containing price-sensitive customers; then market forces conspire to bias… Read more
Target Cost Contracts
This page outlines one way to formulate Target Cost Contracts for agile software development.
The goals of this approach are to:
- Share risk fairly between Customer and Supplier
- Give the Supplier the peace of mind of being protected from significant cost overruns
- Offer enough flexibility to get the best
Opinions
- The right attitude for learning and creativity is to "argue as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong"
- "The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course
People Over Process: the Importance of Social Capital
I recently enjoyed reading In Good Company. The book is addressed to a general business audience, but I found it very relevant to agile software development (particularly agile’s emphasis on people and their interactions). I recommend it to anyone interested in that side of agile.
From the back… Read more