This article focuses on work-processes and thought-processes that can be thought of as clear, explicit, rational, and goal-oriented. That's an important topic,

This article focuses on work-processes and thought-processes that can be thought of as clear, explicit, rational, and goal-oriented. That's an important topic, and I found the article interesting, if a little long. They define Creative Management like this: "Creative management is one of three dominant forms of value management. Its purpose is to establish a system of management that enables and motivates creative staff, such as software engineers, writers, designers and artists, to discover and realize new works of value." It's an interesting thesis, but there a subtle nuance here, I think, which I would put like this: For every clear, explicit, rational, and goal-oriented form of management, there are degenerate irrational forms, and Creative Management is more vulnerable to degenerate irrational forms than other forms of management. Over the years, many of my blogs posts have gotten a lot of discussion on Hacker News, so some of you might remember my focus on irrational, destructive forms of management. In my book How To Destroy A Tech Startup ( https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-ebook/dp/B0772FJQ1T/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo... ) I give details about two different startups that go off the rails because of the ego-driven nature of the decision making by top leaders. But the point I'd like to make now is, compared to older management systems, which were somewhat more amenable to data modeling and feedback analysis, Creative Management opens the door to creativity, but also wish-fulfillment fantasy. (As a point of comparison, think about W. Edwards Deming and his very methodical statistical approach to reducing errors in a factory, and compare that to much more open ended process of inventing, say for instance, a sui generis interface.) Please note, I'm not saying Creative Management is a bad concept, but I am saying it has large pitfalls for which we do not yet have standard answers. Having said all that, there are some good books that have really looked at failures in the world of software, and ways the process can be improved. The books of Robert Glass are excellent, and I've posted a long excerpt of one of my favorite of his stories here: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-worst-software-project-failure-ever http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-worst-software-proj...