It’s a running joke in software development that as soon as someone demonstrates that he’s a good software developer, he’s promoted to management, whether he wants it or not. Image by Cappellmeister via Flickr In recent years, of course, many companies have addressed this to some extent, and it’s now just as common to see [...]
It’s said that the gauge (width between tracks) of American railroads can be traced from bureaucracy to bureaucracy back to the width of Roman war chariots. It turns out that this is just another urban legend, but if you’ve ever worked in an organization of any size, you’ve experienced the organizational inertia that makes this legend so plausible.
I ran into a great one today, for instance. I’m doing some work in a place where I don’t get to set the standards (yes, it’s a government agency). One of the real winners is a standard that mandates that all SQL queries for an application be stored in an XML file, with the queries and their corresponding parameters specified.
I’ve been working through some interesting process issues with my employer’s CTO and head of Product Management. The thrust of these discussions is that we’ve revised our Product Planning and Product Development processes, and I’m currently working on documenting what we’ve agreed upon. No sooner had we come up with a plan, however, than a “highly important” project sprung up, prompting discussions about suspending parts of our process because this project was so important. I’ve managed to stop my head from spinning long enough to gather some thoughts…. (read on for more)