Hi all,

I’m hoping to collect some real-life examples of good and bad management of software development – I’m especially interested in stories from programmers. Assuming that I get some interesting anecdotes then I will write them up and post them on my blog at http://outofthetriangle.wordpress.com/. If you don’t wish to post your stories here then please feel free to email me direct on david@daly.net.

And just to get the ball rolling here are two stories of my own....

1. The “Have you written a test plan?” Approach
I worked for one boss who’s stock phrase seemed to be “Have you written a test plan for that?”. This seemed to be the only measure of software quality that they could comprehend. What made this seem totally ludicrous to me was that this particular manager did not seem to care about the quality of the test plans (i.e. did they uncover defects and prove that the software worked) nor did they check that they had actually been used. As long as there was a test plan in existence for each module they were happy.

2. The “Make It So” Approach
This might sound strange but my favourite managers have been the ones who left me alone to get on with the job. I always felt that getting a computer to do something was my job as a programmer. Once I had been given a clear idea of what was expected I liked to be left alone to “Make It So”. Sure I would provide updates from time to time and let them know if I was going to miss any key dates. But they were updates that I would “push” to boss by exception rather than something that was “pulled” from me by interrupting my work every hour or so.

Hi,

I've spent all of my post-uni career consulting and thus not, during that time, had a manager in the traditional sense. I did, however, spend some time on a kind of "work experience"-ish kinda placement where I did have one.

The guy had got some experience building some databases using Microsoft Access and maybe had written some odd little bits of code. Hardly the same as architecting and building something rather more complex, which is what I was doing there. Unfortunately, he didn't really understand the boundaries of his own knowledge, and often interfered, often providing a variety of fairly vague and, to the project, useless comments that only wasted my time. I just sat there, was polite and listened - I think he was genuinely well meaning - but to me it was pretty much dead time I coulda been doing useful stuff. It was an annoyance more than anything, and not a disaster for the project, but then I was only there for a couple of months working on that. A couple of years, on the other hand, might have brought the annoyance to a level where it made me just want to quit, so the "interfering manager who thinks they know more than they do" scenario could easily actually harm a project, I think.

I'm actually responsible now for managing someone on behalf of one of my clients. I'm a good programmer, but managing is a different skill to hacking and a year in all I know is that I've got a lot to learn about that art...

I don't have any stories of epic fail for stuff I've been directly involved in. But give it a few years...

Jonathan
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I am going to graduate from college and I want to star my own business after graduate from college, I want to learn some business exprience or some mannagement expirence, so can you give me some advices.

Thank you .

This post has been deleted.

Assuming you're out of college by now and you have a good grasp with your business, you might consider some form of training session for your supervisors and/or employees. You could go a number of routes, whether it's standard training manuals or more advanced (and digestable) methods in the vein of elearning. There are many elearning companies out there, and some can adapt certain training for management. Management elearning tutorials can help change sour management experiences for the better.

Assuming you're out of college by now and you have a good grasp with your business, you might consider some form of training session for your supervisors and/or employees. You could go a number of routes, whether it's standard training manuals or more advanced (and digestable) methods in the vein of elearning. There are many elearning companies out there, and some can adapt certain training for management. Management elearning tutorials can help change sour management experiences for the better.

Assuming you're out of college by now and you have a good grasp with your business, you might consider some form of training session for your supervisors and/or employees. You could go a number of routes, whether it's standard training manuals or more advanced (and digestable) methods in the vein of elearning. There are many elearning companies out there, and some can adapt certain training for management. Management elearning tutorials can help change sour management experiences for the better.