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The framing he speaks of in the beginning is the crappy framing developers, by default, apply to themselves. I remember when I was an engineer I had a similar m

The framing he speaks of in the beginning is the crappy framing developers, by default, apply to themselves. I remember when I was an engineer I had a similar mentality and felt like I was at the kids' table. Maybe that's why I got sick of it and became a PM. Good PMs certainly do not think primarily in terms of backlogs and stuff to ship; developers who are not curious about impact and fetishize implementation details think this way. Nor do they judge engineers purely as a function of their ability to crank through the backlog (rather, it's their responsibility to set correct expectations with leadership and reconcile the problems to be solved with the resources available to execute against them). Impact starts with prioritizing problems relative to the state of the world, not prioritizing solutions or features like we normally think of as on a backlog. Once you do that, the backlog comes pretty naturally.

coldcode 6y ago
Maybe you work in a sane company. I work in a company where every freaking VP, SVP, EVP, P and various C wants something different and battles between themselves; all the while we are trying to develop the last thing anyone said, right up until it all changes. We spent 18 months on a single project in which change accelerated over time, every single feature changed in radical ways, and then in the last 3-4 months they insisted that since we hadn't shipped anything we would need to work extra hard on the latest set of things or there would be hell to pay. And then when we got it done anyway cancelled the whole project on the day before the CEO announcement–so they could start on yet another one of these that someone had convinced them was better. Sigh.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  ... was this a software company? That’s horrifying.
  - coldcode 6y ago
    Our business uses a lot of in house (and out house) software, but we don't sell software or hardware.

coldcode 6y ago

Maybe you work in a sane company. I work in a company where every freaking VP, SVP, EVP, P and various C wants something different and battles between themselves; all the while we are trying to develop the last thing anyone said, right up until it all changes. We spent 18 months on a single project in which change accelerated over time, every single feature changed in radical ways, and then in the last 3-4 months they insisted that since we hadn't shipped anything we would need to work extra hard on the latest set of things or there would be hell to pay. And then when we got it done anyway cancelled the whole project on the day before the CEO announcement–so they could start on yet another one of these that someone had convinced them was better. Sigh.

Gollapalli 6y ago
... was this a software company? That’s horrifying.
- coldcode 6y ago
  Our business uses a lot of in house (and out house) software, but we don't sell software or hardware.