5 ms·

How Plans Kill Productivity

34 points by abhiraj60 14y ago

thomseddon 14y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://assistwindow.com/bwm/posts/how-plans-kill-productivity/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
pmorici 14y ago
This is talking about "plans" in the sense of a grand plan not like, "I plan to get x done today" which I find quite helpful in being productive.
- abhiraj60 14y ago
  Thanks pmorici! Glad you liked it!
- gutnor 14y ago
  Indeed, even team planning, goal settings, ... are useful to avoid wasting time on low value stuff, or getting stuck when others can help. Problem of project plan generally is the divide and conquer approach. Work is divided in various independent streams, but plan very often fail to consider that the final product need to be whole and underestimate the merging side of stuff. Getting the balance right is always the problem. Applies not only to planning, but to testing, designing, documenting, certifying, optimizing, supporting, ...
scotty79 14y ago
> I came across several such incidents when I saw employees gossiping about the changes or tweaks that could have dramatically improved productivity but they never conveyed them to their seniors If I don't have "You are to save your employer and your management from consequences of their stupidity." written in job description then I don't see why should I provide them with my insight unasked. Especially since no good deed goes unpunished. For example while working at corporation I may have an idea of how to do some things simpler but I can't take for granted that making things simpler is beneficial to my supervisor or the team he supervises. Voicing my idea could put my supervisor in awkward situation. I suppose start-ups are more straightforward.
- abhiraj60 14y ago
  True, Startups are much more Agile and they some how just don't feel the need of documenting things too much...
- viraptor 14y ago
  That's a very sad view on the employer-employee relationship. I assume that's why inteligent people are hired in general - pretty much the opposite of what you wrote. Unless you're an assembly line worker and your position is just not important enough to be replaced by a machine (yet), I would hope that any improvements you can come up with are going to be respected. Not necessarily accepted and implemented but at least considered. I'd really hate to ever be in a position where an overall improvement is treated as a bad thing because of politics.
  - knieveltech 14y ago
    Have you not worked in an office environment at a medium to large sized company yet? As cynical as the original comment comes across it neatly encapsulates the realities of working in that kind of environment.
    - viraptor 14y ago
      I do work in a (very) large company. I also managed to be fairly successful in ignoring the politics and just doing the job, raising issues with processes and problems in my and other teams when I saw them. If I'm ever punished for doing that, I'll start sending out my resume to other companies most likely.
      - scotty79 14y ago
        That's perfectly possible if you have strong enough position and you are ok with some people hating you silently.
    - hef19898 14y ago
      That's my perception and experience, too.
Nikolas0 14y ago
Great article. Funny thing that I was planning with my colleagues a project right before I read it and we realised that planning is not going to help a lot. I mean it's cool to have some rough estimate but you can never be accurate, especially when a project involves doing things for the first time (ie. innovating)
- abhiraj60 14y ago
  Thanks Nikolas! Glad you liked it!
gadders 14y ago
Straw man argument. A more accurate title would be "How Bad Project Management Kills Productivity". It's like the author has never heard of Rolling Wave planning [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Wave_planning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Wave_planning
- abhiraj60 14y ago
  Well, Your title suggestion inspires me to write another article around management and productivity but I need some more research for it :)
  - gadders 14y ago
    :-) It grinds my gears how we get articles along the lines of "I worked somewhere with pathological project management. Therefore all project management is stupid. YAY DEVELOPERS!!"
brazzy 14y ago
Plans that people rigidly adher to even though the information they were based on is completely outdated are pretty bad. But know what's even worse? Having no plan at all, or just a vague mission statement. Because then you have no way to answer the question "what do I do next and how do I know it's finished?", and you end up yak shaving, turd polishing, working at cross purposes and just plain killing time, often way past the point where the project cannot achieve its goals any more and just lacks someone with the courage to kill it. To be useful, a plan has to be updated regularly.
RTigger 14y ago
I ended up blogging in response - http://rtigger.com/blog/2013/01/23/short-term-planning/ http://rtigger.com/blog/2013/01/23/short-term-planning/ TL;DR - I agree, and highlight how the short-term planning process baked into most agile approaches addresses this problem.
- abhiraj60 14y ago
  Cool!
edderly 14y ago
It feels easy to blame planning. If I take your interpretation, plans are checklist tasks or milestones for management to measure developer progress. At worst a plan can be something you create for someone else to flog you with it. These sort of plans are also by their nature almost always inaccurate to some degree. To my mind a good plan is one where it can provide context for an entire team about where and what (to some level of accuracy) needs to be done. Part of planning is to reduce the principle-agent type problems that come with software. Individual developers are responsible for their own plan and it isn't too constrained so at their own liberty people can swap or modify what they need to do without centralized agreement. Planning isn't easy, and I agree that sometimes the best plan for some types of work is to be very short term and iterative.
Achshar 14y ago
I am having a serious deja vu reading this. I am pretty sure I have read a post exactly like this one here on HN that suggested plans destroy developer interest/creativity and they end up just following the plan instead of suggesting something that they think would be better. It was long time ago.
beardedinventor 14y ago
As a developer recently turned project manager I've come to learn a lot about planning and documentation. I understand the reluctance to plan, and to create project documents at the beginning of a project.. but there are good reasons. One of the key was to create an environment where developers are free from distraction and able to efficiently develop is to have someone plan, and to communicate. Here's my (somewhat brutal) response to your article: http://beardedinventor.com/blog/2013/01/23/plans-dont-kill-productivity/ http://beardedinventor.com/blog/2013/01/23/plans-dont-kill-p...

34 points by abhiraj60 14y ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://assistwindow.com/bwm/posts/how-plans-kill-productivity/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

pmorici 14y ago

This is talking about "plans" in the sense of a grand plan not like, "I plan to get x done today" which I find quite helpful in being productive.

abhiraj60 14y ago
Thanks pmorici! Glad you liked it!
gutnor 14y ago
Indeed, even team planning, goal settings, ... are useful to avoid wasting time on low value stuff, or getting stuck when others can help. Problem of project plan generally is the divide and conquer approach. Work is divided in various independent streams, but plan very often fail to consider that the final product need to be whole and underestimate the merging side of stuff. Getting the balance right is always the problem. Applies not only to planning, but to testing, designing, documenting, certifying, optimizing, supporting, ...

scotty79 14y ago

> I came across several such incidents when I saw employees gossiping about the changes or tweaks that could have dramatically improved productivity but they never conveyed them to their seniors If I don't have "You are to save your employer and your management from consequences of their stupidity." written in job description then I don't see why should I provide them with my insight unasked. Especially since no good deed goes unpunished. For example while working at corporation I may have an idea of how to do some things simpler but I can't take for granted that making things simpler is beneficial to my supervisor or the team he supervises. Voicing my idea could put my supervisor in awkward situation. I suppose start-ups are more straightforward.

abhiraj60 14y ago
True, Startups are much more Agile and they some how just don't feel the need of documenting things too much...
viraptor 14y ago
That's a very sad view on the employer-employee relationship. I assume that's why inteligent people are hired in general - pretty much the opposite of what you wrote. Unless you're an assembly line worker and your position is just not important enough to be replaced by a machine (yet), I would hope that any improvements you can come up with are going to be respected. Not necessarily accepted and implemented but at least considered. I'd really hate to ever be in a position where an overall improvement is treated as a bad thing because of politics.
- knieveltech 14y ago
  Have you not worked in an office environment at a medium to large sized company yet? As cynical as the original comment comes across it neatly encapsulates the realities of working in that kind of environment.
  - viraptor 14y ago
    I do work in a (very) large company. I also managed to be fairly successful in ignoring the politics and just doing the job, raising issues with processes and problems in my and other teams when I saw them. If I'm ever punished for doing that, I'll start sending out my resume to other companies most likely.
    - scotty79 14y ago
      That's perfectly possible if you have strong enough position and you are ok with some people hating you silently.
  - hef19898 14y ago
    That's my perception and experience, too.

Nikolas0 14y ago

Great article. Funny thing that I was planning with my colleagues a project right before I read it and we realised that planning is not going to help a lot. I mean it's cool to have some rough estimate but you can never be accurate, especially when a project involves doing things for the first time (ie. innovating)

abhiraj60 14y ago
Thanks Nikolas! Glad you liked it!

gadders 14y ago

Straw man argument. A more accurate title would be "How Bad Project Management Kills Productivity". It's like the author has never heard of Rolling Wave planning [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Wave_planning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Wave_planning

abhiraj60 14y ago
Well, Your title suggestion inspires me to write another article around management and productivity but I need some more research for it :)
- gadders 14y ago
  :-) It grinds my gears how we get articles along the lines of "I worked somewhere with pathological project management. Therefore all project management is stupid. YAY DEVELOPERS!!"

brazzy 14y ago

Plans that people rigidly adher to even though the information they were based on is completely outdated are pretty bad. But know what's even worse? Having no plan at all, or just a vague mission statement. Because then you have no way to answer the question "what do I do next and how do I know it's finished?", and you end up yak shaving, turd polishing, working at cross purposes and just plain killing time, often way past the point where the project cannot achieve its goals any more and just lacks someone with the courage to kill it. To be useful, a plan has to be updated regularly.

RTigger 14y ago

I ended up blogging in response - http://rtigger.com/blog/2013/01/23/short-term-planning/ http://rtigger.com/blog/2013/01/23/short-term-planning/ TL;DR - I agree, and highlight how the short-term planning process baked into most agile approaches addresses this problem.

abhiraj60 14y ago
Cool!

edderly 14y ago

It feels easy to blame planning. If I take your interpretation, plans are checklist tasks or milestones for management to measure developer progress. At worst a plan can be something you create for someone else to flog you with it. These sort of plans are also by their nature almost always inaccurate to some degree. To my mind a good plan is one where it can provide context for an entire team about where and what (to some level of accuracy) needs to be done. Part of planning is to reduce the principle-agent type problems that come with software. Individual developers are responsible for their own plan and it isn't too constrained so at their own liberty people can swap or modify what they need to do without centralized agreement. Planning isn't easy, and I agree that sometimes the best plan for some types of work is to be very short term and iterative.

Achshar 14y ago

I am having a serious deja vu reading this. I am pretty sure I have read a post exactly like this one here on HN that suggested plans destroy developer interest/creativity and they end up just following the plan instead of suggesting something that they think would be better. It was long time ago.

beardedinventor 14y ago

As a developer recently turned project manager I've come to learn a lot about planning and documentation. I understand the reluctance to plan, and to create project documents at the beginning of a project.. but there are good reasons. One of the key was to create an environment where developers are free from distraction and able to efficiently develop is to have someone plan, and to communicate. Here's my (somewhat brutal) response to your article: http://beardedinventor.com/blog/2013/01/23/plans-dont-kill-productivity/ http://beardedinventor.com/blog/2013/01/23/plans-dont-kill-p...