November | 2012 | Bulldozer00's Blog

Blown, Busted, And Riddled

November 5, 2012 bulldozer00 2 comments

The CMMI-DEV model for software development contains 20+ Key Process Areas (KPA) that are required to be addressed by an org in order to achieve a respectable level of compliance. With such complexity, one could think that L3+ orgs would sponsor periodic process refresher courses for their DICforces in order to minimize social friction between process enforcers and enforcees and reduce time-sucking rework resulting from innocent process execution errors made by the enforcees.

BD00 postulates that many CMMI L3+ orgs don’t hold periodic, rolling process refreshers for their cellar dwellers. The worst of the herd periodically retrains its technical management and process groups (enforcers) , but not its product development teams (enforcees). These (either clueless or innocently ignorant) orgs deserve what they get. Not only do they get blown budgets, busted schedules, and bug-riddled products, but they ratchet up the “us vs. them” social friction between the uninformed hands-on product dweebs and the informed PWCE elites.

Categories: management Tags: Capability Maturity Model Integration, CMMI-DEV, management, project management, software development

So Professional That It’s Unprofessional

November 3, 2012 bulldozer00 4 comments

Mike Williams is one of the big three Erlang creators (along with Joe Armstrong and Robert Virding) and the developer of the first Erlang Virtual Machine. Since then, he’s “moved up” and has been working as a software engineering manager for 20+ years. In his InfoQ talk titled “The Ideal Programmer – Why They Don’t Exist and How to Manage Without Them?“, Mike presents this hilarious slide:

It’s hilarious because, if you browse web sites like LinkedIn.com and Monster.com, you’ll find tons of similar, impossible-to-satisfy job descriptions. Everybody, especially the job description writer, knows that exhaustive “requirements” lists like these are a crock of BS. This practice is so professional that it’s unprofessional. So, why does it persist?

Categories: management Tags: Erlang, hiring practices, Job description, linkedin, management, Mike Williams, programming

Leaders, Followers, Standers

November 2, 2012 bulldozer00 3 comments

Everybody knows what leaders and followers are, but what about “standers“? A stander is not a slacker. It’s a capable person who is content to stay within his/her comfort zone doing the same thing over and over again.

BD00 thinks that all people are capable and they innately want to “move” forward either as a leader or a follower. It’s a social system’s culture that molds “standers” out of capable people.

In cultures where mistakes of commission are penalized and mistakes of omission go undetected and unacknowledged, the optimum strategy, courtesy of Russell Ackoff, is simply to do as little as needed to elude ex-communication. It’s stagnation city with a burgeoning population of standers; sad for the people and sad for the org.