tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-359753372011-09-28T13:40:45.575-05:00Do you believe what you see, or see what you believe?M@noreply@blogger.comBlogger181100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-5070948009647759282008-08-12T11:12:00.006-05:002008-08-12T11:34:10.538-05:00

When creating a system for keeping up with massive ongoing change, there are many things to consider and it is easy to become bogged down in the details of it all. This may explain why so few projects ever follow through with their configuration management plans. While it is obvious to many people involved with a project that some kind of change control and configuration structure is needed, it

M@noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-87433314221702755562008-07-25T15:11:00.002-05:002008-07-25T15:13:50.670-05:00

As promised, this is the "dust cover summary" of what this blog is about. If this sounds interesting, maybe you will periodically come back and read the new installments. If not, then you are no worse off.Project Integrity ManagementCopyright © 2008, M@January, 2005. After over four years and half a billion dollars, the FBI software system modernization project codenamed Project Trilogy was

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-86032402918590691642008-07-25T14:43:00.001-05:002008-07-25T14:44:40.721-05:00

I have received comments on my blog that indicate that some readers may doubt my genuineness on the topic of Project Integrity Control. Probably through some fault of my own, some people have gotten the impression that I am holding back to keep people coming back and that there may not even be anything to the whole topic. The fear is, apparently, that they will invest great amounts of their time

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-44938088334544259172008-07-23T16:17:00.001-05:002008-07-23T16:17:33.926-05:00

In order to show how mapping each item in a project to a ICI an make managing the project easier, it is necessary to define some type of structure that we can talk about. In this installment I will talk about the structure of an ICI and why it is so flexible.As I have already pointed out, the first thing we know about an ICI is that it has a unique identifier. This can be in any form that you

M@noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-20668217437040864022008-07-23T10:24:00.001-05:002008-07-23T10:24:41.044-05:00

Last time I talked about how every part of a project must be uniquely identifiable and explained how the Integrity Control Item (ICI) can be used to perform this task. What I didn't really explain was what an ICI looks like, where it lives, and what it can do other than be unique. While being unique is a full time job for many celebrities, it is not extremely useful on its own. If we are going to

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-51915098246250970212008-07-18T15:28:00.003-05:002008-07-18T15:34:37.062-05:00

In my last article I talked about the need for a unique identifier for each Integrity Control Item (ICI). I am going to expand on that concept this time around. If you end up following this series all the way through, when you look back you will see that the IM is so critical to getting control of your project that without it, there isn't much chance of pulling it off successfully. It will, one

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-68003795640606496642008-07-17T16:05:00.006-05:002008-07-17T16:22:41.685-05:00

What is "Project Integrity Management"? How is it different from Configuration Management? How does it make it any easier to prevent the dreaded project meltdown? I'm glad you asked.As mentioned in a previous article, Configuration Management attempts to control elements of a project, specifically controlling and managing the constant change of information associated with the project. The amount

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-73910728572389966492008-07-16T09:25:00.004-05:002008-09-10T23:20:40.104-05:00

I would like to start by admitting that I am cursed. (SPOILER WARNING: if you are considering hiring me, please stop reading now!) I am an albatross to companies that hire me. It is not that I sabotage them or fail to do my job, it is just that I have an uncanny ability to take jobs for companies that are starting to unravel. For whatever reasons, I have had a really bad run of projects in my

M@noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-60635646836292996162008-07-14T14:49:00.002-05:002008-07-15T16:19:50.757-05:00

Your In my last article I put for the theory that the most important thing to do when considering a new methodology, especially something as far reaching as CM (or as I have renamed it, Integrity Management - I can do that, its my article), is make sure you have the support of your developers. They are smart folks and it is much better to have them on your side than against you. So how do you do

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-27825267403471874582008-07-13T14:04:00.005-05:002008-07-14T10:48:09.310-05:00

So where do projects go wrong? If you are like me, you have been on a lot of projects and they always seem to be going along pretty well, then all of a sudden it starts to crumble. Deadlines begin to loom, hours get longer, and weird things start happening in the code that never happened before. As if that weren't enough excitement, the client finally pops into reality and starts to actually look

M@noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-87290459628401407382008-07-03T11:28:00.002-05:002008-07-03T11:32:14.332-05:00

As this series continues, I think it is becoming clear where it is going. Yes, I lured some folks in with some pretty attention-getting verbiage, but let's face it. If I had just come out and said "I am planning to do a series of articles about the value of Configuration Management in software projects!" you could have heard the wind blowing and crickets chirping as people avoided this blog like

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-31334064706649217022008-07-01T14:00:00.001-05:002008-07-01T14:00:59.794-05:00

One of the first questions that usually comes up when talking about Configuration Management is "What software should I use?" While the choice of tools is important, this should not be the first decision made. I would argue that you can't even answer that question until you have gone through a lot of other stuff first.In many ways implementing CM is similar to software development itself. With a

M@noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-69002162763469397712008-07-01T09:20:00.001-05:002008-07-01T09:22:09.337-05:00

Why is software development so hard? It could be argued that software development is so hard because programming is so easy. Since this seems to be contradictory, I will explain what that means.Whether or not most people realize it, the titles "developer" and "programmer" are not interchangeable. Nearly all of us (myself included) start out as programmers. We learn the programming languages, the

M@noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-6998265094630906092008-06-30T10:04:00.005-05:002008-06-30T12:35:54.393-05:00

OK, enough analysis and example. Whether you agree with my approach, my points, or even my page layout (yes, I know some of you hate it, but then again, it is my page right?), I think nearly all of us can agree on one point: Software has plenty of room for improvement.In the big scheme of all things technical, programming is pretty new. Not only that, but since languages change over the course of

M@noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-84692223734155308452008-06-27T08:00:00.003-05:002008-06-27T08:15:36.332-05:00

The response to my previous article about Software Engineering (or the lack thereof) resulted in an impressive number of responses. This is apparently a topic that a lot of people have an interest in. Someone posted a link to the article on Reddit.com and I have to say, those folks are brutal critics. But as with most critics, they have a very annoying way of being right.I chose to introduce the

M@noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-62618133266166737032008-06-26T09:57:00.001-05:002008-06-26T11:53:19.093-05:00

A plane crashes, killing all 287 people on board. A bridge collapses plunging thirteen motorists to their watery graves. A construction crane buckles and crushes an apartment building, killing several workers and residents. We have all heard these stories on the news and they are always followed by outrage, someone asking how this could have happened, and many extensive investigations into the

M@noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-58492679172796429382006-10-26T12:37:00.000-05:002006-10-26T13:45:08.261-05:00

The world of computers is reaching a critical juncture. At stake are the past fortunes of some very large “old school” companies such as Microsoft and the future fortunes of some up and coming “rebel” companies like Google and Yahoo.As the prevalence of always-connected broadband internet access increases, some subtle but powerful shifts are taking place. The future looks a lot less like the Bill

M@noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35975337.post-61146407003822643802006-10-18T17:07:00.000-05:002006-10-18T17:27:34.402-05:00

What is Metaphor Crash?In his essay “Once there was the command line”, Neil Stephenson introduces the concept of Metaphor Shear with a hypothetical occurrence that nearly all of us can, unfortunately, relate to. He described it as the moment when the document that he had just been working on suddenly disappeared from his computer screen with no warning. What was a few seconds before a very

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