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Hi Bill,
> > Manufacturers admit there are aspects of the business process they
> > can't control. Many software managers and executives aren't (yet)
> > willing to admit that.
>
> I find that fascinating. We've established in other threads that
> these managers tend to be people with engineering experience, in
> many cases promoted up from the ranks. Who has arranged for them to
> forget it, and how?
Are you suggesting that these people knew, when they were engineers,
that much of their work was uncontrollable? I'm not sure they knew
that. If they did, their estimates wouldn't have been consistently
optimistic.
My initial attraction to programming was largely that it offered such
a controllable result. Computers responded to my wishes in a
completely deterministic way. And I could learn enough about how they
responded that I could produce the result I wanted. Because I was
focusing so intently on what was controllable (the computer's
response), I never noticed the stuff I wasn't controlling (my own
creativity, for example). As a result, I felt as if I were in control.
I've known many programmers who felt the same way. They (and I) were
able to dismiss unexpected outcomes with a wave of their hand.
"Fergie called an emergency meeting, which put me an hour behind
schedule." Once we've dismissed the reasons for the variance, we can
easily pretend that our initial expectations were right on the money.
I've also known some of those programmers to want to become managers
precisely because they believed they could control things better than
their managers were doing. When they become managers themselves, they
can begin to see the variables (the very variables they were once so
good at dismissing) as programmers' excuses.
Have you not seen these things?
> [I confess that what I stated in the extremeCustomering list many
> months ago is still true: I haven't met one yet. I know an awful lot
> of managers, at all levels, and every one I've ever asked has
> acknowledged the risk and cost of not being agile.
Do you also ask them whether they acknowledge the risk and cost of not
being predictable and controllable?
Dale
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