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Have you ever worked for a fortune 100 company? The dev manager has probably never met the CTO. Im in this right now with my currrent job. I still keep my build

by fein 11y ago

Have you ever worked for a fortune 100 company? The dev manager has probably never met the CTO. Im in this right now with my currrent job. I still keep my builds and test them longer than i should. Less broken shit gets through, but i regularly delay my qa ba's because of it.

DougWebb 11y ago
So, not the CTO, but some shared higher-level manager. The point is that the QA lead cannot report into Development, and Development cannot report into QA. Both of those arrangements can lead to a bad actor stopping the other group from doing the right thing. (Eg: if QA reports to Dev, then Dev manager can force bad code to ship, and if Dev reports to QA than QA manager can prevent shipping and force Dev to waste time on excessive/pointless test code development that's not cost-justified.)
- zhte415 11y ago
  I've met people that call something similar 'fake agile'. Surely everyone should report into the business (end-user on the business side) lead responsible for making this functionality happen. This includes Dev, QA, business. QA should be business? This is no longer 1985, there is no reason business (product owner) shouldn't be a capable PM and BA for their own product.
  - DougWebb 11y ago
    In the company I used to work for, the CTO and VP of Product Management were equals, both reporting to the CEO. The CTO's reports included the QA director, Dev director, and Project Management director. On any given project, we had a Product Manager who set the business requirements, a Project Manager who ran the project, a Dev lead in charge of the development team, and a QA lead in charge of QA. None of these people could override the others because of the reporting arrangement, so we had to collaborate instead to make sure we all met our goals. Early on this arrangement worked really well. But it started falling apart when ownership of the company changed and politics became a factor as people who cared more about moving up through the organization than about the success of the company and quality of the products were hired and promoted. My take is that bad management will destroy any approach you might take to producing good software. That's why I eventually left.
rikkus 11y ago
I work for a FTSE 100 company and the dev manager and CTO in the division where I work are very well connected. I don't think the size of company is necessarily the only factor here.

by fein 11y ago

DougWebb 11y ago

So, not the CTO, but some shared higher-level manager. The point is that the QA lead cannot report into Development, and Development cannot report into QA. Both of those arrangements can lead to a bad actor stopping the other group from doing the right thing. (Eg: if QA reports to Dev, then Dev manager can force bad code to ship, and if Dev reports to QA than QA manager can prevent shipping and force Dev to waste time on excessive/pointless test code development that's not cost-justified.)

zhte415 11y ago
I've met people that call something similar 'fake agile'. Surely everyone should report into the business (end-user on the business side) lead responsible for making this functionality happen. This includes Dev, QA, business. QA should be business? This is no longer 1985, there is no reason business (product owner) shouldn't be a capable PM and BA for their own product.
- DougWebb 11y ago
  In the company I used to work for, the CTO and VP of Product Management were equals, both reporting to the CEO. The CTO's reports included the QA director, Dev director, and Project Management director. On any given project, we had a Product Manager who set the business requirements, a Project Manager who ran the project, a Dev lead in charge of the development team, and a QA lead in charge of QA. None of these people could override the others because of the reporting arrangement, so we had to collaborate instead to make sure we all met our goals. Early on this arrangement worked really well. But it started falling apart when ownership of the company changed and politics became a factor as people who cared more about moving up through the organization than about the success of the company and quality of the products were hired and promoted. My take is that bad management will destroy any approach you might take to producing good software. That's why I eventually left.

rikkus 11y ago

I work for a FTSE 100 company and the dev manager and CTO in the division where I work are very well connected. I don't think the size of company is necessarily the only factor here.