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The problem with enterprise software is the same problem with most issues we see from the producer side - those doing the work are completely different in align
by devonkim 8y ago
The problem with enterprise software is the same problem with most issues we see from the producer side - those doing the work are completely different in alignment and requirements / needs than those that make the decisions to purchase for those. In Agile (and devops), the greatest friction is squarely around the reality that there's a manager caste that pushes down and makes decisions with very little feedback loops or misaligned incentives by all the stakeholders involved, and this causes churn within the group. For the buyers and the users of the software, their requirements are oftentimes lost. In your scenario, users with more power over their day-to-day software will demand better software and be empowered to select alternatives, but in more traditional organizations there will be a lot less churn comparatively because users will simply put up with bad things forcibly.
Almost all the "radical" software and project management practices to show up (and when implemented successfully at least) in the past 15 years aims to give more power to workers and to de-scope the role of management from pure decision-makers into a more supportive role with more intense feedback. There is a very consistent theme that organizations where these efforts fail are ones where management uses new processes and tooling to exert their existing political power to achieve results instead of also transforming themselves.