How to “control” a software project, and why control is never achieved with planning

When a software project starts, and we’ve put considerable effort into the planning tasks, we feel the project is under control. Or “in control”.  However, that’s fundamentally wrong. I tried to come up with a way to describe how I understand control in software projects, to illustrate the need and applicability of the empirical management …

The Project Slippery Slope: why the concept of Projects lead to Waterfall, sooner or later, but inevitably…

All that is below applies in the context that is defined here. This is not supposed to cover your personal “projects”, musical “projects”, art “projects”, home improvement “projects”, etc. You get the picture. In a company that uses the concept of “projects” to decide what to work on, fund, plan, control work (contextual boundary), projects …

How to manage risk in Agile?

Unvalidated opinions are “bets”, with the caveat that they beget even more “bets” (decisions based on that opinion). So we can say that unvalidated opinions generate other unvalidated opinions based on the original one, therefore creating exponential growth in risk. The process of validating an opinion (like Popcorn Flow by Claudio Perrone) helps us jump …