We have written much on product requirements on the blog.  Requirements are those statements, derived from the project scope, upon which we will build the product.  A clear understanding of these and the circumstances surrounding the use of the product will improve our chances of achieving the desired development objective. Nonfunctional Requirements One of the […]

Technical documentation serves as a repeatable communications medium. That is, written so that anybody reading with the appropriate competency will come away with the same conclusion.  Not filling this gap or relying upon verbal communications has great limitations. Many of us have likely played that game as children where a group of people line up […]

I recently taught a class in preparation for the Project Management Institute, Project Management Professional certification exam.  We were going through example questions and the verbiage was very specific and pointed to a specific answer from the four choices available.  When the answer was not what was selected there was an obvious level of disappointment […]

Learning and Morbidity & Mortality I have been watching a hospital type show.  That show demonstrated something called a Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) Conference and it occurred to me that some adaptation of this approach would help organizations to bring the learning from the work to the entire company. Learning and Conventional Projects We have […]

Really, Eliminate Configuration Management? Anybody that believes they are saving project time, engineering time and money by eliminating configuration management does not understand how things really work.  This is especially true if the items you are eliminating the configuration management for, interface with other items.  Building a system or subsystems that comprise a variety of software components […]

CMMI Requirements Management We decided to continue with requirements management since there are some generic goals that are probably just as important as the previously discussed specific goal and practices.  This is especially true when we consider the long-term impact on our project execution capabilities. CMMI Generic Goals The generic goals associated with requirements management […]

Risk Management and FMEA Approach We walk through the use of the Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) tool used as a risk register that we can use for our project risk management. Using this approach we can uncover, assess, and plan our risk response actions in one sheet. That includes identify our control or mitigating […]

Imagine, a story based on true events. This is not John Lennon’s Imagine.  Imagine you are an executive and you are sitting down to your early morning breakfast with the daily paper.  As you read the paper, you find an article about your company and you are stunned.  The article is not a flattering article […]