I'm amazed at TG sometimes how many times I'll get invited to a meeting on a 'new' project only to find out that this project has been floating around for a few weeks and the only reason that I'm there is to give some numbers. Specifically, HowMuch and HowSoon.
What drives me nuts is that I usually only need to see one paragraph on this project (and that's usually all there is at this point) before I know that the project has severe problems. Maybe the security wasn't considered. Maybe scalability is a pain. Maybe the workflow just doesn't fit a web world very nicely. There's always something.
That makes the latest Dilbert so much fun. I can imagine that I totally rain on the parade for those folks that invite me to a HowMuch, HowSoon meeting. After all, when the meetings only consisted of people that had no knowledge or expertise in building a software product, the decisions must have been a lot quicker and easier. :-)
This cartoon is timely. I've been reading The Best Software Writing I lately and I loved the article by Rory Blyth on Excel as a database. I doubt that I'm the first one to say this, but that Rory dude is kind of messed up. However, I think he's spot on with his cartoon. Including the fangs.
There seems to be a theme coming out.
I say this because these two articles remind me of an old post by Eric Sink entitled Geeks Rule and MBAs Drool. Eric Sink runs SourceGear and describes in his post a number of situations where he can't understand how a non-geek could have made the decisions that he had to make. Specifically, ''I cannot imagine facing a decision like this one without the depth of technology understanding that I have'. Sound familiar' He doesn't actually come up with a way to mitigate this problem for non-technical managers. Instead, his prognosis is a bit dismal:
'People like to wonder why software companies fail. This is one of the big reasons why.'
So let's assume that all of us that are currently working in software companies will eventually be unemployed unless we are being led from the top by a geek. How can we avoid this problem in our next job'
Assuming that your next job might be your own start-up, Eric does leave us with one little nugget of wisdom that might take care of Dilbert and Rory Blyth's concerns:
'It is common to see software companies starting out with two founders, a geek and an MBA. Do you really need the MBA''
Since he usually gets the last word anyways, I'll finish this post with a quote from Joel Spolsky. Coincidentally, Joel is the editor of The Best Software Writing I book that I mentioned earlier. Here's his take on the whole mess:
'If you ask me, and I'm biased, no software company can succeed unless there is a programmer at the helm.'
So I guess that pretty much sums it up, eh' Non-technical people can't be trusted and they should all be canned. Sounds simple enough to me. :-)
P.S. If you wanted to read the assorted essays and posts from Joel's book, you can find all of the links online.