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Credit due where credit is due: these project management software companies have done a good job of convincing people they need it. I've taken to using tools t

Credit due where credit is due: these project management software companies have done a good job of convincing people they need it. I've taken to using tools that most closely mimic notepad+pen or whiteboard+marker. Increasingly I am finding that a physical whiteboard, markers, and post-its are good enough. And if you need to create backups, the image quality on any smartphone is very, very good these days. The more time spent working on the thing that manages your work, the less you are working!

colechristensen 5y ago
What they do is give middle management something to do. Often questionably necessary, middle management has a hard time doing something when engineers understand the product and upper management has the right balance of setting direction and entrusting decisions to the makers. So they start asking the engineers to do things and get upper management on the train of wanting reporting. Doing that with pen-and-paper engineering and people with context is HARD... so all of these tools exist to make this middle layer of doing work better. And arguably unnecessary people earn a lot of money by convincing themselves and others that they are necessary, so companies get to be organized to have these high overhead tools to support this high overhead style of organization. Now to be honest some level of organization is necessary, and becomes necessary as the enterprise and product grows in complexity, but very very few people work long enough or with a diverse enough set of organizations to be able to see what is necessary and when and what is not. If you hire people and put them in a position and tell them they have to work a certain number of hours they will find or create work to do. Oftentimes this work is not better than doing nothing but the WASP work-ethic and general cultural norms really can't handle the idea that smart, important, useful people can provide the most value sometimes by not doing anything until they are needed.
- xcambar 5y ago
  > general cultural norms really can't handle the idea that smart, important, useful people can provide the most value sometimes by not doing anything until they are needed. Thank you for this comment. I have had this is mind for quite some time but I never could phrase it in such a clear, articulate, phrasing.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what middle managers do in physical production processes: removing barriers, and reviewing processes for continuous improvement. For whatever reason, management science has not caught up to the ubiquity of knowledge work in the modern economy.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    From my perspective, some of what middle managers do is helpful, much of what they do could just was well not be done. My point being that these tools create work from top to bottom. There's information to fill out, statuses to be updated, progress to be tracked, reports to be generated, etc. etc. etc. which all fall on to a spectrum of "things which have utility" and "things which are busywork" often heavily favoring the latter. They make management jobs "easier" in that they create a clear set of "something to do" which is different than making their jobs easier in the mode of "providing value to leaders, makers, investors, etc." All being done in a cargo cult of "this is how you should work" and satisfying a certain kind of person's desire for things to be "organized".
    - quartesixte 5y ago
      I wonder if HN’s demographics contributes to a general disdain for middle management because, from my non-software engineering point of view, software doesn’t need a lot of management to produce. Hardware on the other hand, needs an organization layer on top of the production layer. Removing barriers, creating traceability, improving processes, and trying to get multiple different teams to work together efficiently.
      - colechristensen 5y ago
        Hardware does indeed need more organization and generally complexity and size requires more organization but there is a fairly constant trend of company age also linking to more and more organization regardless of need. The ever expanding bureaucracy is a problem everywhere.
systemvoltage 5y ago
If you've ever worked in manufacturing, real Kanban boards are messy but organized for the people to know what's going on. Every Kanban board I've seen is unique in its own ways. Some use post-it notes and some specialized tokens that magentically attach to the board. Design of the board and layout can vary widely, but generally when you see one, it is a workshop organization tool made by people who feel comfortable using it. Take away is that just because they're not using an off-the-shelf project management / WIP management tool, doesn't mean they're not organized.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Whiteboards are better in every way but one : a whiteboard doesn't sync with anything central or remote. You have to decide if this matters to you. If yes get a tool, if not get a whiteboard.
  - quartesixte 5y ago
    If no sync means forcing the engineers out of their desks and onto the floor so they actually talk to the production teams and hold in their hands the product that so far has only lived in CAD for them, then I’ll take no-sync any day of the week. Of course, that’s not feasible but hey, a guy can dream.
  - marcind 5y ago
    it's not "syncing" yet but https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com does make it easy to save and send whiteboard content with other people and tools (in real time). one-click integrations are a few weeks off. syncing is just one step after that.
Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
I've seen manager using the physical board to lock people in a room at their mercy... or to create busy work for them, to justify their existence. That's seriously messed up. The whiteboard was good to move forward a discussion, explain concept and other niceties. To organize work ? Hell no.
p_l 5y ago
To be honest, after playing with stuff like Enterprise Architect, and even JIRA - they could be game changer in many places I worked in. But that would require a lot less gatekeepng and other artificial moats around them, and possibly a rather more open organisation model which wouldn't fly with middle management (even if your specific adjacent middle managers would like to, they don't operate in vacuum). And that's before you hit cost reasons. Or cost of training, especially since companies really, really don't like training people.

colechristensen 5y ago

What they do is give middle management something to do. Often questionably necessary, middle management has a hard time doing something when engineers understand the product and upper management has the right balance of setting direction and entrusting decisions to the makers. So they start asking the engineers to do things and get upper management on the train of wanting reporting. Doing that with pen-and-paper engineering and people with context is HARD... so all of these tools exist to make this middle layer of doing work better. And arguably unnecessary people earn a lot of money by convincing themselves and others that they are necessary, so companies get to be organized to have these high overhead tools to support this high overhead style of organization. Now to be honest some level of organization is necessary, and becomes necessary as the enterprise and product grows in complexity, but very very few people work long enough or with a diverse enough set of organizations to be able to see what is necessary and when and what is not. If you hire people and put them in a position and tell them they have to work a certain number of hours they will find or create work to do. Oftentimes this work is not better than doing nothing but the WASP work-ethic and general cultural norms really can't handle the idea that smart, important, useful people can provide the most value sometimes by not doing anything until they are needed.

xcambar 5y ago
> general cultural norms really can't handle the idea that smart, important, useful people can provide the most value sometimes by not doing anything until they are needed. Thank you for this comment. I have had this is mind for quite some time but I never could phrase it in such a clear, articulate, phrasing.
jkhdigital 5y ago
I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what middle managers do in physical production processes: removing barriers, and reviewing processes for continuous improvement. For whatever reason, management science has not caught up to the ubiquity of knowledge work in the modern economy.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  From my perspective, some of what middle managers do is helpful, much of what they do could just was well not be done. My point being that these tools create work from top to bottom. There's information to fill out, statuses to be updated, progress to be tracked, reports to be generated, etc. etc. etc. which all fall on to a spectrum of "things which have utility" and "things which are busywork" often heavily favoring the latter. They make management jobs "easier" in that they create a clear set of "something to do" which is different than making their jobs easier in the mode of "providing value to leaders, makers, investors, etc." All being done in a cargo cult of "this is how you should work" and satisfying a certain kind of person's desire for things to be "organized".
  - quartesixte 5y ago
    I wonder if HN’s demographics contributes to a general disdain for middle management because, from my non-software engineering point of view, software doesn’t need a lot of management to produce. Hardware on the other hand, needs an organization layer on top of the production layer. Removing barriers, creating traceability, improving processes, and trying to get multiple different teams to work together efficiently.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Hardware does indeed need more organization and generally complexity and size requires more organization but there is a fairly constant trend of company age also linking to more and more organization regardless of need. The ever expanding bureaucracy is a problem everywhere.

systemvoltage 5y ago

If you've ever worked in manufacturing, real Kanban boards are messy but organized for the people to know what's going on. Every Kanban board I've seen is unique in its own ways. Some use post-it notes and some specialized tokens that magentically attach to the board. Design of the board and layout can vary widely, but generally when you see one, it is a workshop organization tool made by people who feel comfortable using it. Take away is that just because they're not using an off-the-shelf project management / WIP management tool, doesn't mean they're not organized.

bluGill 5y ago
Whiteboards are better in every way but one : a whiteboard doesn't sync with anything central or remote. You have to decide if this matters to you. If yes get a tool, if not get a whiteboard.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  If no sync means forcing the engineers out of their desks and onto the floor so they actually talk to the production teams and hold in their hands the product that so far has only lived in CAD for them, then I’ll take no-sync any day of the week. Of course, that’s not feasible but hey, a guy can dream.
- marcind 5y ago
  it's not "syncing" yet but https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com does make it easy to save and send whiteboard content with other people and tools (in real time). one-click integrations are a few weeks off. syncing is just one step after that.

Arcanum-XIII 5y ago

I've seen manager using the physical board to lock people in a room at their mercy... or to create busy work for them, to justify their existence. That's seriously messed up. The whiteboard was good to move forward a discussion, explain concept and other niceties. To organize work ? Hell no.

p_l 5y ago

To be honest, after playing with stuff like Enterprise Architect, and even JIRA - they could be game changer in many places I worked in. But that would require a lot less gatekeepng and other artificial moats around them, and possibly a rather more open organisation model which wouldn't fly with middle management (even if your specific adjacent middle managers would like to, they don't operate in vacuum). And that's before you hit cost reasons. Or cost of training, especially since companies really, really don't like training people.