Chad: DeMarco's paper is a good read; thanks f...

2010-02-01T20:49:00.639-05:00

Chad: DeMarco's paper is a good read; thanks for the reference. The quote about measuring and controlling comes up in a lot of blogs, especially now with the emphasis on Agile and distributed control to implementation teams.

Nevertheless, I still like RAdm Hopper's idea which even DeMarco in his paper seemed to agree with: people are led to values and instructed on principles; they acquire beliefs from experience and experimentation. The things people do as a consequence of their values, beliefs, and principles are manageable, and mostly measurable. But I really don't believe you can legislate innovation: you can only manage the environment--whether cancer research, intelligent computing, or other--within which creative and innovative expression can appear.... like the big-bang of creation....who really knows what the origins are of a new-to-the-world idea?

Interesting post John! I often hear the phrase &q...

2010-02-01T19:28:28.942-05:00

Interesting post John! I often hear the phrase "I can't manage what I can't measure." (Thanks Tom Demarco! Demming has a bit to say on this too.) Yet we do this all the time! From Jorge Aranda's blog quoting Robert Glass:

“The problem with the saying “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”—what makes it a fallacy—is that we manage things we can’t measure all the time. We manage cancer research. We manage software design. We manage all manner of things that are deeply intellectual, even creative, without any idea of what numbers we ought to have to guide us. Good knowledge worker managers tend to measure qualitatively, not quantitatively.”

http://catenary.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/controlling-what-you-cant-measure/

We've even seen Tom DeMarco questioning this statement.
http://www2.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2009/0709/rW_SO_Viewpoints.pdf

I think we need to balance leadership, management and metrics when we approach innovation.

Comments on Musings on project management: Innovation and the accidental nemesis

Chad: DeMarco's paper is a good read; thanks f...

Interesting post John! I often hear the phrase &q...