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From https://twitter.com/RickBeerendonk/status/514336396048617472/photo/1 Let’s look at these conjectures in light of Red Herrings, Straw Men, and Distortions.
• Red Herring -‐ refers to something that misleads or distracts from the relevant or important issue
• Strawman – an argument based on the misrepresentation of an opponent's argument
• Misinformation – false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally.
1) Technologies are …
a) Stable i) This would defy the behavior of our technology-‐based world, since all
technologies move at a rapid pace. Otherwise they die. No credible manager in the technology domain thinks technologies are stable. Even in heavy construction, petrochemical, power (nuke and conventional), technology evolves rapidly.
ii) In our software intensive systems world, based on rapidly evolving hardware, technologies cannot be stable. We must plan accordingly.
b) Evolving i) Any credible technology management Plan must have on-‐ramps and off-‐
ramps for changes in the technology.
ii) Planning for change is part of all good plans iii) But we must be clear -‐ Plans are strategies, they are hypotheses.
(1) And hypotheses need to be tested. (2) Produce outcomes that can be tested against the need is what projects
do. 2) Technologies are
a) Predictable … i) Even pouring concrete for the highway is not predictable. There are
changes to processes, technologies, skills, equipment, and other externalities
ii) Anyone in SW or IT that believes that technologies are predictable is not working on anything important.
b) Unpredictable i) Unpredictable means those planning the project have little understanding
of the underlying technologies and where they are going. This might be the case. In this case they are ill prepared to manage a technology project.
ii) This would be like hiring a commercial builder that had little understanding of modern energy efficient homes, solar power and heating, thermal windows, and high efficiency HVAC systems and asked him to build a LEADS Compliant office building.
iii) Why would you do that? Why would you hire software developers that had little understanding of where technology is going? Don’t they read, attend conferences, and look at the literature to see what’s coming up?
3) Requirements are… a) Stable
i) Only trivial projects have stable requirements. Trivial projects don’t need estimates, or much of anything in the form of management, planning, or strategy.
b) Evolving i) Requirements must evolve. To not evolve, means the project is a
production line project. And even then change orders, modification order and updated are normal on the Toyota production lime
ii) The Capabilities should have some stability; otherwise you’re on a death-‐march project.
iii) Requirements follow the same process as estimates (1) The cone of uncertainty (2) But you have to start some where, so start with the capabilities and
the requirements that are know in enough detail to start working (3) A major manned space flight system I worked, when NASA was in the
business of manned spaceflight had three capabilities for the system (a) Fly four crew to the Space Station (b) Rendezvous and dock and stay attached for 6 months (c) Return to the Pacific with four crew and board and keep them
alive (d) The prototype of that space craft just landed in the Pacific – Orion
4) Requirements are a…
a) Constraint … i) This depends on the point of view
(1) If there is a requirement for a 100GB link between two sites to support the traffic for video conferencing, it’s a constraint. Can’t do 100GB? Then the product will not meet the customer need. You will have failed in your quest to provide value.
b) A Degree of Freedom i) If there is a requirement to process transactions for medical claims at
20% less than today, then there are lots of ways to do that, including making changes to other requirements
ii) Requirements trades are part of all engineering design processes. So the deterministic statement is a Red Herring -‐ all requirements MUST evolve is success has a chance is being the outcome of the project
5) Useful Information is … a) Available at the start
i) If you’re starting a project without knowing something about where you are going, you’re wasting your stakeholder’s money and laying the ground work for a death-‐march while searching for what done looks.
ii) Spending other peoples money is not the same as wandering around looking for a solution. You should – I’d say must – know something about what capabilities the work is seeking to produce.
iii) Even research and development projects have a goal in the software business. Even in the bio-‐Chem business, they have budgets and goals to find something that makes money for the firm
b) Arriving Continuously i) Arriving continuous is not mutually exclusive with being available at the
start. ii) This notion is a Strawman, Red Herring, and simple Misinformation.
6) Decisions are… a) Front-‐Loaded
i) Someone has to decide to start, set the direction, establish the initial needed capabilities.
ii) Without this leadership direction, the project is going to wander around looking for something of value.
iii) Big Red Herring and misinformation about how business manages it’s money
b) Continuous i) Yes closed loop control has a continuous information gathering process. ii) But close loop control has a set point a steering goal – where are we
going, when do we expect to get there, what impediments will we encounter along the way, how much money do we need along the way, will we make our money back when we’re done.
iii) Around Red Herring, misinformation about how business makes decisions
iv) Add these decisions are microeconomic decisions, based on opportunity costs about probabilistic outcomes in the future.
v) This requires – mandates – that estimates of both cost and value be made to inform the decision making process.
vi) To do otherwise is like deciding to climb a mountain – a Fourteener here in Colorado – without estimating the duration, the weather, our skills and abilities – let’s see what the top of Long Peak looks like? Those doing that die at a rate of 3 to 5 a year.
vii) Dying on Longs Peak will happen on your project without up front information and continuous updating of that baseline information with new information.
viii) This is called Close Loop Control 7) Task Durations are…
a) Predictable i) Only if you know nothing about the Aleatory (irreducible) uncertainty of
project work. ii) Red Herring, Strawman, and Misinformed iii) All project work is probabilistic – behave accordingly
b) Unpredictable i) All project work is probabilistic – behave accordingly ii) Look for past performance, reference classes, parametric adjusts. iii) Never done this before
(1) Go find someone who has. (2) This is like building a LEADS compliant building without having ever
built such a thing. (3) No rational client would hire you, and if they did, they get what they
deserve – late, over budget, and likely doesn't work 8) Task Arrival Time are…
a) Predictable i) The arrival of work is wholly dependent is the completion of prior work
in a resource constrained environment. (1) If you work in an unconstrained resource world, you have a rare and
privileged job, hang on to it (2) Normal projects are constrained by money, time, and resources.
ii) These completion times are random variables based on the productivity of the labor force, defects, corrective actions, rework, externalities, and a plethora of other drivers of variability.
iii) The result is not project variable, arrival, completion, or other measures can be predictable in the absence of a Most Likely value and the Variances in these Most Likely values.
b) Unpredictable i) All project work is based on uncertainty. ii) Aleatory uncertainty, which is irreducible, requires margin and reserve to
protect the deliverables from the naturally occurring variances. iii) Epistemic uncertainty, which is reducible, requires specific work to be
performed to reduce the uncertainty. Cost and Time are expended to do this.
9) Our Work Path is … a) Linear and Unidirectional
i) Only when there no dependencies between work elements is the work linear. (1) This may the case, when the project work has no external
dependencies or the work is such that any order of the work is possible and produces usable out comes.
(2) Usually these types of projects are low complexity. ii) The unidirectional versus recursive is a semantic issue.
(1) Recursive in mathematics means relating to or involving the repeated application of a rule, definition, or procedure to successive results.
(2) In computing is means relating to or involving a program or routine of which a part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions.
iii) In projects, recursive work is the former – the repeated application of a procedure – developing outcomes. This repeated application hopefully increases the maturity of the outcomes from that work.
iv) In the absence of no dependencies, networked dependencies are to result. Only in trivial projects are there no dependencies (1) Installing Oracle requires a machine, a virtual machine, licensing,
storage, and memory – virtual or real. With out these in place the installation cannot start. That’s a trivial example, all other examples have more dependencies.
(2) One notion of some agile paradigms in INVEST, where the I is Independent. Without confirming the work in the backlog is actually Independent of all other work, the notion of linear and unidirectional cannot be correct.
(3) Deploying the enrollment screen for a health insurance system require a database for validation of qualifications, a database to screen applicants against prior-‐conditions, financial background check and a variety of other externalities.
b) Networked, Recursive i) In the presence of dependencies, networked work is common. So finding
projects where there are no dependencies means finding projects where the order of work is irrelevant.
ii) If the work can be performed in any order, even priority order, then networking is not very meaningful. So if INVEST is in place, networks not needed.
iii) If networked describe the work order, the linear processes are used.
10) Variability is… a) Always harmful
i) The notion of harmful and always are Red Herrings. No units of measure. ii) Variability is always present, both Aleatory and Epistemic, and while if
left unaddressed it can be harmful, any mature organization understands this and has approaches to deal with this variability
iii) No credible project management process fails to understand this. b) Required
i) Variability is always present. ii) All projects are network of non-‐stationary stochastic processes,
interacting with each other in non-‐linear ways. iii) So yes, variability is required. Not knowing this means you haven’t
worked any serious project. 11) The Math Needed is …
a) Arithmetic i) This is one of the silly Red Herrings. ii) Once it is recognized that all project work is based on random variables,
the arithmetic is a start, but not the end. b) Probability and Statistics
i) Yes, probability and statistics. ii) Statistical process create uncertainty iii) Probability of completing on or before, at or below is driven by the
statistical processes.