Tim Lister on Project Sluts and Strawmen 128
cramco writes "Tim Lister, principal of Atlantic Systems Guild and co-author of 'Waltzing with Bears: Managing Software Project Risk,' and 'Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams' talks about the patterns that help determine software success or failure. Patterns good and bad include project sluts, Brownian motion, the strawman, and the safety valve."
Yet another /vertisment.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a nice start, but lacking any real depth - the article could be summarised in one or two sentences, listing a number of good and bad practices. I know it's stripping people of their $DEITY-given right to derive fiduciary advantage from relaying information and opinion, but can we please have some
Re:strawman (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:strawman (Score:2, Interesting)
And then they blame you when they realise that the prototype is actually a flaky piece of s#!t because all it was designed to do was pretend to be the product they wanted. Gah!
Re:Isn't that basic Project Management? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Isn't that basic Project Management? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lister talks about getting the right people for that project, and that means that you don't fully staff it before you know what you're going to need.
There are still managers out there who think that the specs that were agreed up front are set in stone, and not to be changed. Even if you do change them, when do you adjust the specs and how do you go about it? As far as I can see from the short article, these are questions addressed by this book.
There are enough managers who still royally screw up the "get people", "build the team" and "adjust specs" jobs, to warrant a book on the subject. There are a fair few out there already and I haven't read this one, but if Lister's previous work is anything to go by it might be a worthwhile read.
I tend to agree with you there, but you can be a bit more creative than either doing nothing to socialise or saying "we *are* having drinks this Friday afternoon". A manager can certainly make a difference in how a team bonds, and for those managers I have three magic words: "during office hours". Take the team out for a nice 3 Martini lunch, or an afternoon of paintball. The cost of doing this during work hours looks daunting on the spreadsheets, but it will generally earn itself back a few times over.