The First 90 Days

When I have been asked what I would do in the first 90 days of a new project as the Project Manager, my responses have typically included some or all of the following as a “Self-Orientation Start Up Plan”: 1) Gather the latest project documentation available from the following sources: a) Portfolio Management files forContinue reading “The First 90 Days”

Orthogonal Views…

A current definition provides us this: or·thog·o·nal   [awr-thog-uh-nl] adjective 1.  Mathematics . a. Also, orthographic. pertaining to or involving right angles or perpendiculars: an                 orthogonal projection. b. (of a system of real functions) defined so that the integral of the product of any           Continue reading “Orthogonal Views…”

Ever Present Project Management Risks

Every project has Risks associated with the delivery of the Business Solution. These need to be discovered as part of the Project Submission process and continue to be anticipated and discovered during the ultimate execution and delivery of the requested business solution. However, I also believe there are Project Management Risks that are inherent inContinue reading “Ever Present Project Management Risks”

Input – Process – Output

What exactly should a computer program do?  How will you know if the program you have written or requested to be written for you does what you need it to do? It’s really a whole lot simpler than you might think. If you, as a business user, can define what information is available to accomplishContinue reading “Input – Process – Output”

Syntax of an ERD – Entity Relationship Diagram

Syntax Rules for an Entity Relationship Diagram: An Entity Relationship Diagram Sample: Use this link: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1keA4BzVCJXcUoNWDw7-0pIrQ7AsB5CgavjWR7P5Wyrg/edit?hl=en_US (may have to paste into a browser) Business Rules derived from this sample are: It is also interesting to note that since there is no relationship between Customer and Product there are no Business Rules that can be derived betweenContinue reading “Syntax of an ERD – Entity Relationship Diagram”

The Software Engineering Handbook

Information Technology (IT) has been moving towards a “Popcorn Culture” for many years where our Practitioners are regularly looking for a quick POP of a little progress in technology.  When I was growing up in the world of computer programming, we were taught that this work took planning, design, testing, and re-work before a productContinue reading “The Software Engineering Handbook”