Tech projects fail all the time, or they produce less than is desired. For instance, the product works but the code is awful. As developers we've a...
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I can relate to your post very well. I have been such projects a few times now. For me,there is a communication barrier between non-techincal manager and developers. Budget planning also seems to be an issue, and there is usually more responsibility/pressure for a single developer. Most importantly, stakeholders have vague ideas of the products they want to build, and result in feature creeps or less than MVP product.
Glad it's useful. It is essential you work with clients to clearly define what they want before you begin building. Vagueness is a killer.
As a developer, I feel bad when I had to make shortcuts to just make it work and meet the deadline, thus producing less maintainable code.
I really think that programmer's abilities can be a reason why a project fails. There is a shortage of good programmers, and a lot of places may end up hiring people that just aren't up to the task. If your talent pool is simply not strong enough, no amount of process, planning and management can rescue it.
It obviously depends on the project what you need. There are many projects that need certain skill levels, and if you don't have them, you just won't get a satisfactory result.
I agree that finding good developers can be hard and bad developers can really screw things up on occasions. As a manager I have been burnt once or twice by the hiring process.
I would make a few points though. A good or experienced programmer is someone who understands the importance of planning and process. As such they value concepts such as sprint planning, testing and documentation. So for me process, planning and management go hand in hand with good programmers.
In the article I briefly touched on the concept that management, planning and process are relative to the team you have. If you have a weak team you're likely going to spend a lot more time on planning and process. Your team will need to do a lot more research and quality assurance than a stronger team might.
Planning and process are tools which allow you to manage work relative to the capability of your team. And given we live in a world where nothing is perfect and no development team is perfect we need to handle this in some way. For me planning and process are the way we handle the less than perfect resources we may have to hand to complete a particular project.
Thanks for your thoughts. I believe managers and developers need to follow the concepts of tasks decomposition and project lifecycle. Understanding of these processes help both sides win.
You truly feel my pain. Thank you for making me aware that I am not the only one frustrated by this madness! Very well-articulated. You hit the nail right on its head as far as I am concerned.
I'm really pleased you enjoyed it.
This is like a series of nails hit on their heads. Awesome.
Thank you for this post. I wish every manager and developer read this.