Re: The Art of Project Management

Berkun is 20 years late. He's telling managers what they should have done. Now the process
tells them the same things in excrutiating detail.

For some, sure. For others, namely all the web folk, they haven't made
those mistakes yet (though their ignorance of software history, often
a blessing, sets them up to be personally acquainted with them soon).

If there's anything in my book that's of value to this thread, it's
the essential need of trust for good work to happen. The growth and
protection of trust between any two people working together is really
all that any programmer or manager on a team ever has. Most of the
process rubbish I see is an attempt to replace the manager's
responsibility for building trust with rules that try to prevent
mistrust from happening - but the side-effects (lack of empowerment,
the fleeing of bright mavericks, committees and their Kafka-esque
meetings, general massacring of passion) are nearly always worse than
the problems the process was intended to solve. And when the process
fails, process-mongers always blame the process and start hunting for
a new one, instead of examining their basic incompetencies as managers
or leaders of people.

Given the choice between A) a team of people that trust each other,
but have no awareness of formal process, vs. B) a team that has
memorized every software process guidebook ever, but have no faith in
each other, and I'll take A every time. Their relationships will allow
them to build whatever process they need and grow. Team B, despite
their individual talents and process knowledge, is doomed.

Sure - I like team C (a team that trusts each other *and* understands
the value of lean, well crafted processes), but they're less fun to
argue about :)

-Scott
www.scottberkun.com
.

Relevant Pages

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