I'm borrowing shamelessly from an essay by D. Miessler about efficiency in security design for user products by generalizing to the quality -- in the broadest sense -- of a product. That is to say: quality as evaluated by a user (quality is in the eye of the beholder, as it were)And, I might observe that the principle explained below corresponds closely with the Agile idea of "enough, but not ..read more

In project management school, the lesson on Critical Path includes this rule:Apply resources first to the critical path, and subordinate demands of other paths to ensure the critical path is never starved.Beware this hazard: Resources may be real people: The problem of applying resources arises when we move from the abstract of 'headcount' to the real world of 'Mary' and 'John'. Alas! The ..read more

Full disclosure: I wrote this posting myself, but I did ask ChatGPT for some ideas to include. It's always a PMO objective to minimize cost if scope and quality and schedule are constant. But they never are. So, those parameters are usually intertwined and mutually dependent variables along with cost. But suppose for discussion that scope and quality are held constant (not to be traded ..read more

12 trillionThe estimated number of tokens used to train OpenAI’s GPT-4, according to Pablo Villalobos, who studies AI for research institute Epoch. He thinks a newer model like GPT-5 would need up to 100 trillion tokens for training if researchers follow the current growth trajectory. OpenAI doesn’t disclose details of the training material for GPT-4.Attribution: Conor Grant, WSJ  Like ..read more

Slack, aka 'buffer', aka 'white space', aka 'early finish', is the last thing to schedule. After all the other stuff is scheduled.Why?Because slack should be used (applied) last as a way of making space for schedule extension risk.Has to be in the baselineBut in order for it to be applied properly, slack has to be in the baseline schedule to start with. In other words a schedule without ..read more

Are you working in military projects? U.S., NATO, or the so-called 'Five Eyes'?You may run across this concept in military systems design:"Transformative Trinity"And so what is that?The “Transformative Trinity” in military contexts refers to the integration of new technologies like drones, the democratization of higher-quality information, and collaboration with commercial firms to enhance ..read more

I like a lot of the stuff Daniel Miessler thinks about. He has an interesting essay about "why software remains insecure". By insecure, he means released software with known functional and technical bugs at release, and even far beyond release 1.0 and 2.0 and on and on.Why should this be?Miessler opines: "... the existence of insecure software has so far helped society far more than it ..read more

"Priorities aren't redal unless budgets reflect them"CIA Director BurnsOf course, Director Burn's assertion is spot-on and another version of "show me the money", or perhaps sticking with the intelligence domain: "follow the money". This whole idea is the bane of strategic planning in which long-term plans outrun the budget authority and even outrun the budget planning, in other words: a floating ..read more

AI-squared. What's that?Is this something Project Managers need to know about?Actually, yes, PMs need to know that there are entirely new test protocols coming that more or less challenge some system test paradigms that are at the heart of PM best practice.AI-squaredThat's using an AI device (program, app, etc.) to validate another AI device, sometimes a version difference of itself! Like GPT-2 ..read more

"I don’t think you can be good at these jobs unless you’re willing to lose them. You have to get your mind at a stage in your life and career where the best move to make could put yourself in jeopardy to losing your job, but it’s the best move to make"Paul D. RyanIn many respects Ryan's "put yourself out there" advice for successful senior leadership is a great discriminator between leadership ..read more