3 ms·

> making employees lives miserable to reduce the need of planning such a great point. we seem to live in a zero-planning world now. i'm surprised at how often

> making employees lives miserable to reduce the need of planning such a great point. we seem to live in a zero-planning world now. i'm surprised at how often, at least in app programming projects, i go to great lengths to show a manager how the app is progressing and where it's ultimately heading, and get no meaningful course correction or even a "that looks great" then, the other shoe drops: after the app is complete and ready (or even after it's gone live) -- only then -- do they take the time to actually look at it and demand a change. and they don't care that it's harder to accomplish at that late stage, or that it damages programmer morale. they actually consider that to be a valid process.

noir_lord 8y ago
It's largely identical in enterprise programming. I have a lovely and smart boss but I can not get him to look at stuff properly until after I roll out a potentially massive change to our internal ERP. Real money on the line as well. I think a lot of it is that non-programming managers don't really grok on the intrinsic level the vast complexity that can be under the skin of a seemingly simple change. In fact that is largely our job I guess, to hide all that complexity, when a user selects "order following required stock from supplier" they don't need to know what is happening under neath, they just care about price and when it'll be delivered on a container to one of our sites.
- wozer 8y ago
  Somehow this even happens with programming managers. I feel like we have a real crisis of leadership in software development.
  - torqueTorrent 8y ago
    I'd buy that for a dollar!
- leowoo91 8y ago
  That's mostly because managers underrate the concept of 'optimization' and how features are interconnected. Once a developer makes a mistake, all other things already working, gets broken. Small changes are not so small after all. They need to be understood as a whole, instead of individual updates.
nradov 8y ago
Start with UI mock-ups first before writing any back end code. Schedule review meetings and specifically ask management to approve all major elements. Take detailed meeting minutes documenting that approval and send those to all the internal stakeholders. With that paper trail it becomes more difficult to request major changes later.
torqueTorrent 8y ago
> ...a zero-planning world now... JIT is for more than just compilers these days!
- ido 8y ago
  It was in fact not about compilers to begin with: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing

noir_lord 8y ago

It's largely identical in enterprise programming. I have a lovely and smart boss but I can not get him to look at stuff properly until after I roll out a potentially massive change to our internal ERP. Real money on the line as well. I think a lot of it is that non-programming managers don't really grok on the intrinsic level the vast complexity that can be under the skin of a seemingly simple change. In fact that is largely our job I guess, to hide all that complexity, when a user selects "order following required stock from supplier" they don't need to know what is happening under neath, they just care about price and when it'll be delivered on a container to one of our sites.

wozer 8y ago
Somehow this even happens with programming managers. I feel like we have a real crisis of leadership in software development.
- torqueTorrent 8y ago
  I'd buy that for a dollar!
leowoo91 8y ago
That's mostly because managers underrate the concept of 'optimization' and how features are interconnected. Once a developer makes a mistake, all other things already working, gets broken. Small changes are not so small after all. They need to be understood as a whole, instead of individual updates.

nradov 8y ago

Start with UI mock-ups first before writing any back end code. Schedule review meetings and specifically ask management to approve all major elements. Take detailed meeting minutes documenting that approval and send those to all the internal stakeholders. With that paper trail it becomes more difficult to request major changes later.

torqueTorrent 8y ago

> ...a zero-planning world now... JIT is for more than just compilers these days!

ido 8y ago
It was in fact not about compilers to begin with: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing