The arguments advanced against an "Operations mindset" are mostly strawmen. Operations is primarily about efficiently operating an organization towards a goal.

The arguments advanced against an "Operations mindset" are mostly strawmen. Operations is primarily about efficiently operating an organization towards a goal. The type of thinking advanced in the article however is more likely to be pushed by someone with no operations management training. For instance, putting people on multiple projects versus single projects. Multi-tasking and context switching cause known losses in efficiency even under the perfect scenario with no startup time. So if you want to emphasize getting projects completed, multi-tasking must go. This is an operations management mindset, though it runs against much current practice. The points about efficiency are similarly misguided. You don't focus on worker efficiency, operations points you at throughput and global optimization rather than local optimization. Those however are about focusing on improvements and operations of the current systems. It is true that innovation is different than operations. In the same way that learning to program efficiently in a language is different than inventing a programming language. They are different kinds of things. Many operations principles however can be successfully applied to innovation. For an excellent read on the topic, read "The Principles of Product Development Flow" by Reinertsen. To get a better understanding of operations in general, and not the hyperbole advanced in the article a good starting place is "The Goal" by Goldratt. One big revelation I learned while studying operations is that the things that largely drive developers crazy aren't good management practices. They aren't advanced by operations researchers. They are in fact what I always thought they were, bad management practices.