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jackvinson
Boston, MA
Theory of Constraints consultant. Knowledge management advocate.
Interests: Theory of Constraints, Knowledge management, Personal knowledge management, Getting Things Done, bicycling, reading, cooking
Recent Activity
I totally feel you. Most of my blogging, however infrequent, has been discussing books I have read.
I haven't posted for a long time, I'm rethinking...
I haven't posted for a long time, I'm rethinking what to do with the blog. My work is less in KM these days, so inspiration mainly comes from books or what I read elsewhere. Hope to be back soon!
I always enjoy these posts. In this one, I am a little worried about the problems listed for "agile" projects (and I agree that many projects suffer from similar problems). Specifically, the problems are all missing solutions. "they don't have X". Clearly the answer to these problems is to force them to have X. But what _do_ they have? Or maybe why are these missing solutions a problem for these projects?
A Solution Looking for a Problem To Solve
We see solutions being sold everywhere. From household cleaners to complex software management processes and tools But would you go to your favorite hardware store and buy a tool, because there was a salesman at the front door demonstrating a new tool unless you had a problem that could be solve...
Congratulations, Mike. I know you will enjoy it. Does this mean the blog moves over to Gartner, or will it stay here?
p.s. Typepad wouldn't let me leave a not-signed-in comment.
Doing What You're Passionate About
If you’re lucky, there is some aspect of your professional life that your passionate about – something that sparks your intellectual curiosity, something that compels you to advocate for something or someone – something that actually inspires you. While I’ve truly enjoyed my last two years worki...
Good stuff, Glen. One thing I often do with this discussion is to talk about how these uncertainties impact a project in execution. Depending on the structure of the project, the impacts are felt in different places...
The Very Notion of Probabilistic Modeling is Lost on most Projects
The obvious picture at the left is how nature works. Nature driven by stochastic processes. The same type of stochastic processes that drive project work. Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance Measures are based on random variables. These are all connected in networks of dependent relatio...
Don Norman had an interesting comment along these lines in his latest book (Living with Complexity). His starting point is the real world: if I make a mistake in the physical world, there is often not a graceful failure. I push the wrong button and nothing happens, or I break things and learn not to do that again. He makes a connection back to design in general: incorrect actions should become more obvious, rather than trying to account for every possible mistake and coding around them.
That said, your examples are more mistakes made on the backend (by the designer) than by the user. It shouldn't be the user's fault for using IE6 or an old computer that doesn't render your graphics beautifully.
Graceful Degradation and Web Development
The second of three new terms I learned in January (from my colleagues at Sametz Blackstone, a design firm with whom we're partnering) that captured my curiosity was "graceful degradation," another way of saying (per Wikipedia) "fault tolerance." However, it's a very particular kind of fault to...
Happy New Year! Keep up the good stuff.
I think we've had versions of this conversation before, but there is more to the "Late starts" statement than is written. Is a "late finish" necessarily a bad thing? If you change the system, one could create situations where a "late finish" isn't necessarily a terrible thing.
Quote of the Day - A New Years Resolution
“Don’t be original; be obvious. When you state the obvious, you actually seem original… Likewise, the more specific the feelings, experiences, stories – the more universal they appear.” - Nina Paley. Here's some obvious statements that should be applied in 2011: Progress is measured by the deli...
I made it for about two months without a car in Austin back in 1992. Maybe you don't really need the cars that Texas tells you that you need. :-)
London, England, to Austin, Texas: The pursuit of happiness
A fifth of the circumference of the Earth. From an urban zone of some 13 million people to roughly two million. From not really needing a car to needing two cars. It took my bicycle (and everything else) eight weeks to get here; our stuff was delivered yesterday. From a cool job to a cool job. ...
I don't know about the first one, but you have to do a simple search for ASCII art. Even a google on that term gives you some impressive items. Here are some cows: http://www.chris.com/ascii/index.php?art=animals/cows
Bring Back ...
So far no one has heeded my call to bring back Magnum PI. While I'm waiting I have a couple of requests. First, do you remember a really cool app you could get on your PC in a about 1995 where little sheep walked around the windows on your screen? I think it may have been a screen saver. It w...
I see what you mean. In the CCPM execution, the plan describes time estimates and any integration points (where non-linearities multiply) are protected by feeding buffers. When the reality of the project diverges from the plan, then you get buffer consumption / buffer recovery as a natural effect of striving to move the tasks along as quickly as possible.
Measuring Progress - What Can We Use?
A previous post about the supposed difficulties in calculating Earned Value brought a comment that maybe the calculations weren't difficult but rather extensive. Extensive seems a bit of a stretch. The first question though, the inverted question actually is: How are you going to measure "progr...
Thanks. You've remembered that my take on the world is colored by TOC, and your blog has been helping my education beyond that.
I think the other key difference with TOC planning / execution methodology is that "how much have you done" is somewhat unimportant to finishing the project. For that, you need to know how much more time is left. That's calculated from what's remaining on current work plus the existing estimates from the original plan.
Measuring Progress - What Can We Use?
A previous post about the supposed difficulties in calculating Earned Value brought a comment that maybe the calculations weren't difficult but rather extensive. Extensive seems a bit of a stretch. The first question though, the inverted question actually is: How are you going to measure "progr...
Why not a simpler measure: how much more time is needed (as a percent of the original project duration) vs. the buffer consumption for the entire project.
Measuring Progress - What Can We Use?
A previous post about the supposed difficulties in calculating Earned Value brought a comment that maybe the calculations weren't difficult but rather extensive. Extensive seems a bit of a stretch. The first question though, the inverted question actually is: How are you going to measure "progr...
The reason I asked "how they are used" to help run projects is that buffers are a key element of Critical Chain Project Management (coming out of the Theory of Constraints world). Buffers are located similar to the way you describe, and there are a number of sizing schemes. But it is the _use_ of these buffers that is most important: Essentially, when you consume the buffer faster than you are completing the project, it is an early warning that something is going awry and you need to do something about it.
How are they used in DoD (and other areas where they are recommended)?
Schedule Margin
I can't tell you number of times I've looked at an IT schedule that had zero (0) margin. In the space and defense this is simply not allowed. Margin and the management of margin is mandated by several guidance documents. Why it is difficult in the commercial IT world is a mystery to me. Here's p...
I have to admit this (the article on margin) is the first time I've seen the explicit recommendation to use margin / buffer in projects. This is an excellent way to help deal with natural variability of project work. Beyond the question of "how big" is that buffer, the key question is how is the buffer used to help manage the project - or the collection of projects in the portfolio.
So, how do the buffers help manage the projects?
Schedule Margin
I can't tell you number of times I've looked at an IT schedule that had zero (0) margin. In the space and defense this is simply not allowed. Margin and the management of margin is mandated by several guidance documents. Why it is difficult in the commercial IT world is a mystery to me. Here's p...
While creating a Must-Finish-On date is not helpful, why not ask for a "when would you like to be done" at the beginning. Then in the process of constructing and validating the network, you can see whether you have any hope of actually reaching that end date. If not, then you have to accept a later date - or revise your network.
Also, do you really recommend ASAP on the tasks within the network, once the project has been released? Doesn't that have the danger of putting too much work into process? What if one chain of the network is two years, and another chain is only three months? (Of course ALAP is dangerous too - you don't want those integration points to slide.)
The Absolute Worst Way To Plan a Project
I recently watched the demo of several web based project management tools. While listening to the web cast or watching the demo "video," I was shocked to listen to how the demonstrated built a project: Set up the tasks Define the start and planned end date Assign the resources to the tasks Iden...
Clarke- It just leads (eventually) to an email subscription page. They don't need another copy of my email - does it actually get to Efrat's notes or not?
Efrat's notes ... for "The Choice"
Here's a public version of Efrat Goldratt's additional notes to accompany "The Choice". http://www.tocico.org/general/recommended_links.asp. [Thanks to Grant Reid.]
That's odd. Commenting seems to be working okay now. Maybe I clicked on a different button.
Elegant Organisations? Daily Simplicity? Fugetaboutit!
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" Occam's razor keeps it simple - "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". Or in short form; simple is better. A basic philosophy of science - simple is better. Einstein could be a signatory to that principle. And for us little people ...
I like this. It connects to ideas I have learned from the Theory of Constraints community, where they talk about key questions to ask of "the shiny new gadget."
* What is the power of "the gadget" (what does it give you)?
* What problem does it purport to solve? What limitation in the current world does it resolve?
Simple questions, even that second one is completely missed in many discussions. But these aren't the only questions, because the shiny new gadget will come into a business situation that has grown accustomed to the problem/limitation. So
* What rules / policies exist due to that problem?
* What new rules / policies need to be created now that the limitation is gone and the shiny new gadget is being used?
Black Letter Project Law
Paul Ritchie introduced a new idea – the Black Letter Law. This is the notion that there are basic standards for any practice. The original practice for Black Letter Law was of course Law. So are there Black Letter Law’s for Project Management? Paul mentions three. Here’s my take on expanding Pa...
Happy Birthday, Clarke. 40 isn't so bad.
Better?
I can't think of any better way to put this so here goes: I turned 40 today. It's one of those milestone events, 'though the imagine I have in my head of what "40" looks like must have been formed in the 1970s when 40 year old men definitely wore slippers much of the day, ate their dinner at 5pm ...
Yes, Twitter cannibalizes blogging. That's pretty well established. But as Laurent suggests above, that's because they maybe should have been there all along. Same for me.
The problem that you are worried about is long-term memory of said tweets. That's a problem for everyone. There is no ONE place to collect everything I do online. For a time, the blog was close. But even that doesn't work in the face of Twitter, Facebook, commenting, Delicious (still use it from time to time)... I called this a "me collector" and I've heard other terms "self aggregator" etc.
Does Twitter cannibalise your blog content?
When I was twitterising I noticed that I wrote a lot less on my blog and that I stopped blogging the most useful and interesting links I found - tweeting is quicker and easier than blogging. My blog (and the long term memory which my blog gives me) suffered. I had 150ish tweet followers who we...
Role models are role models, right? There are some models you don't want to imitate, of course.
Bad role models?
Perhaps it's coz I'm about to turn 40 and I'm going through a premature mid-life crisis, but my 3 favourite famous people are (currently): 1. Jeremy Clarkson who recently used a rude word to describe Gordon Brown. Earlier in the year he described Brown as (something like) a one-eyed scottish gi...
Excellent, Clarke. I will be waiting to hear more stories, based on your new work.
I got the job!
I found out yesterday that I got the job I really wanted. I'm delighted. For four reasons: first, work has been scarce and I hate living off our savings; second, it's a job I'm good at AND don't have to travel; third, it's with a great company, one I admire; fourth, it's gonna be a fun project...
I've had the TOC ICO certification for Suppply Chain management, but I haven't kept up my membership or the official certification. Thus far, my clients haven't questioned my qualifications or those of my clients.
Ski - It's interesting that you don't see the the point of TOCICO, but then refuse to work with anyone who isn't a Jonah. Is that a contradiction, or am I missing something in your larger thinking?
Certification ...
There's a message being retweeted around twitter that goes a bit like this "be wary of people writing / talking about theory of constraints that aren't tocico.org certified". To which I say: Blah! I am not TOCICO certified. My TOC mentor, Jim, isn't TOCICO certified. He's in his 70s now b...
Ross' photo appears to be private.
Compare and contrast
Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate the fact that I have this hot desk in Geneva airport with power and wifi access but the contrast between the cold, cavernous, grey and mostly empty airport terminal and Ross's current computing environment is stark!
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