Stephen Cohen's Thoughts on Agile and Project Recovery

Requirements aren't evil, we are.  Really.  We, the software developers of the world are solely responsible for the problems of our industry.  It's not the process, methodology, or whatever school of thought is winning today’s beauty contest...

The Agile community is in danger. As someone who has been around Agile for a very long time I find myself asking; Has Agile abandoned its core premise and begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery. First the punch line. Go to Wikipedia and...

People routinely ask me why I focus on recovery instead of prevention. Its true, projects would be far better off avoiding me and my services. That said, the sun will rise tomorrow and projects will falter and fail. Knowing that I will always have customers...

Are you a SCRUM Master? A PMI certified Program Manager? Do you have a quick reference card for for the Microsoft Solution Framework in your wallet? How many prescriptive methodologies do you know? More importantly, have you been repeatedly successful...

I find it interesting that every project, well nearly every project, I am asked to recover begins the same way. I go on-site to watch and listen. I see conflict and chaos masquerading as progress. I hear discussions of challenges but no admittance of...

I am seeing a gathering wave of players in the project recovery market. I have stumbled across a half dozen new companies specializing in it. I have been told about a few management conferences where recovery is being discussed and have certainly been...

There seems to be no clearer sign of a maturing project than the ability to build/test/deploy daily. The daily build is as close to a universal cure as any process change I can bring to a troubled project. It helps developers by providing a trusted method...

Once a project goes far enough off the rails to need recovery it is a good bet that the people involved are making decisions based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt (affectionately referred to as F.U.D) instead of reason, experience, and logic (R.E.a.L...

Consider these requirements; · The system shall properly calculate the taxes due at the time of payment. · The system shall properly display the location and speed of inbound projectiles. · All users will only be able to change data appropriate to their...

I have a serious marketing problem. It seems Recovery for a project is a dirty word. You see, needing to recover a project implies the project has failed. No one really wants to admit they have failed... at least not on their project. We, as an industry...

Me: Why would you do that? Them: You just don't understand Me: Help me understand, what could have possibly driven you away from the <fill in obviously right thing> and to do <fill in obviously wrong thing> Them: Well, it's complicated. There...

Predictions of failure rule the industry. Any number of organizations and people look at trends and willingly, no gleefully, declare why projects will fail and, in general, I agree. Lets face it, most projects aren't paid on delivery. Nope, it's by the...

While speaking at the Dr. Dobbs' Architect and Design World conference last week Scott Ambler said "Like it or not you are governed!" Genius in its directness and simplicity and extremely relevant for recovery projects. Many a challenged project struggles...

At it’s heart, recovery is about fixing problems.  Before we get into individual and combination problems let me lay my definition on the table for your consideration and comment.  A problem is only a problem if it causes the team to underperform...

Here are a few random problems that prevents delivery of a solution to users that they can use . Remember, if it fails to function as intended, fails to function at all, or fails to return a reliably correct result it’s not done. You have problems. ...

In a recent paper, Bridge Methods: Using a Balanced Project Practice Portfolio to Integrate Agile and Formal Process Methodologies , my co-author and I dug into how nearly every methodology, be it formal or agile, allows if not requires customization...

Risk tolerance is defined on investopedia as the degree of uncertainty that an investor can handle in regard to a negative change in the value of his or her portfolio. Sounds pretty good to me for project portfolios too. In our case, negative change includes...

All troubled projects share one and only one characteristic.  Things have gone wrong.  Terribly wrong.  Other than that, everything is, and I contend must be, unique.  Let's face facts here; projects are the accumulated work of people...

So you’re seeking to improve things. You tried to implement a “best practice” or twelve … how did that work for you? I am convinced that problems addressed by a well known practice will not always result in a well known and positive result, and it seems...

In response to a recent discussion over at Yahoo on the requirements Engineering list, a question was posed as to why “just enough” was ever okay when creating a model.  After all incomplete models or improper use of a modeling standard has to be...

It's just software ... really, it's just software.  It's not as important as your family, or your health.  It (generally) doesn't kill people or change lives.  That kind of thing is left to real people.  I will concede that those real...

There are a few reoccurring themes in project recovery;  Hold Fast, Don't Flinch, Lead calmly, and of course the old stand by ... decide slowly but act quickly.  Troubled projects are ripe with Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (affectionately known...

I often hear Agile and Project Recovery demeaned by those practicing more "formal" methodologies as unpredictable. Predictability is absolutely necessary to manage a project of any real size. Key indicators such as earned values cost and schedule variance...

To my customers I beg your forgiveness. I know I am hard to deal with. I am demanding, unrelenting, and all too often I break most if not all of the rules as you knew them. But that's not really important. What is important is delivery. Getting out tools...

There is a pretty lively debate going around agile circles. It started with a simple question ... what does it mean when people say a project is or is not Agile? My response is a simple one; Agile isn't something you are or something you do. Agile is...