Rain Dancers and Bone Casters – The Management Myth

Recently I’ve been confronted with software development strategies like SCRUM and Waterfall.  So far I’ve observed that Waterfall didn’t work because people didn’t have common sense ( you mean customer feedback is important? ) and that SCRUM and Agile are most beloved by highly paid consultants and people that don’t want to bother thinking about what they want to build.

I can’t decide if they are “wrong” per say but maybe software development is more akin to a creative art.  Adding metrics and forecasts to try and make sense out of all the moving pieces is like trying to plot out the development cycle of the Mona Lisa.  To each his own I think.  To me anyway sometimes software development seems like a bunch of people falling down stairs at the same time;  you’ll get to the end eventually but have no idea in what configuration or when.

This passage from the Myth of Management struck a chord within me and I wanted to share it with some friends so here it is.  I think it speaks to the fact that we there is so much software project management “mastery” in the world according to mbas, six sigma, scrum, and other weekend classes yet I constantly hear about projects running behind schedule and being overbudget.  Something must be fundamentally wrong with how we approach not only software project management, but management in general ( where are the productivity gains from the digital revolution? ).

Here is the passage:  ( I’m grouping software development management as a piece of strategy here )

“The rationalist framwork of the strategic planners provides a way to overlook the fact that CEOs–and indeed all other socio political structures of authority– exist as much on account of human irrationality as on the basis of rational decision making.  In the world according ot the strategists, the absolute authority of the CEO purportedly arise from the dictates of pure reason.  But in fact the corporate hierarchy that exists today is a work of customers, cultures, laws, and politics.  It is the product of a historical process, not a logical one.  Ultimately, it exists for many of the same reasons that warrior aristocracies existed in the ancient world.

Strategic planning, along with the rest of the discipline of strategy, is to modern CEOs what ancient religions where to ancient tribal chieftains.  Its rain dances( i.e. budgets ) and oracles ( forecasts ) ultimately explain the devine right of the rulers to rule.  It is actually a covert form of political theory.  As the tribal imagery of modern strategists makes plain, however, it is a political theory that advances little from its origins in the prehistoric era.”

Now I don’t want to say management is bad.  Somebody needs to maintain vision and make sure everybody has enough pencils to write.  Yet at a time when we are in a deep recession caused by a complete lack of oversight and management ( by both the watched and the watchers  )maybe we need to readjust how we think of the topic and what the true purpose of it is.