[stephc_int13]

"other stakeholders that have legitimate needs with regards to predictability and insight into a project's progress are left in the cold"

Well, that's a bit dishonest, this is not really about coordination, this is about risk and money.

This is about helping people who are not working on the project to sleep better.

I believe that setting the budget and deadline from the start and then asking the team to scope the project is a reasonable way to manage risks, but not the other way around.

[commandlinefan]

> not working on the project to sleep better

I believe it's more sinister than that: it's to prevent the people who are working on the project from sleeping at all. Remember, most developers are on a salary, which means minimum 40 hours a week, but a maximum of 168. People who view other humans as expendable "resources" - the amoral types who inevitably rise to prominence in corporate America - then see planning as a strategy to push that number as high as possible. They thus insist that an inherently unpredictable process - software development - must be 100% predictable and, when that inevitably turns out not to be the case (yet again), they demand punitive uncompensated overtime. This isn't an accident.

[marcoow]

Hey, I’m the author. I think you Mis-interprete what I’m saying - of course understanding timelines and budget will often be a legitimate need of one or some stakeholders, among others. And of course making teams stick to deadlines when that’s not possible is bullshit. But the other extreme - demanding that nothing can ever be estimated and understood well up-front - is equally wrong. In the Limited scope of an iteration, it is well possible to reduce risk and uncertainty at least a good amount through thorough analysis and preparation.

[stephc_int13]

I disagree, in my opinion it is never legitimate to pressure people into predicting the future, and it simply never works.

There is a very this counter-intuitive thing about predicting the future.

We tend to believe that by cutting our predictions in smaller and smaller pieces, our predictions will be closer to reality, or at least more manageable. But there is nothing further from the truth, the best predictions are made when someone experienced in the field is looking at the big picture and try to give a rough estimation.

This has been proven again and again.

At the end od the day, people are working and projects gets finished not because, but in spite of micro-management and other unhelpful practices.

[marcoow]

Indeed we disagree. I’d say the reluctance that’s relatively wide spread in particularly among engineers to even try and reduce risk as much as possible (within a limited scope) and framing that as „predicting the future“ is a huge fallacy that doesn’t benefit anyone. There’s just not only the 2 extremes - completely and reliably predicting the future vs. just going off with no plan - but there’s something in the middle.

Also the big picture That one could look at in the beginning of a project and base an estimate on is more often than not not what you end up with at the end of the project anyway.

[stephc_int13]

My main craft is software engineering but I've occupied managing roles in the past, and even twice as the CEO of a small company.

I am perfectly aware of the difficulties of managing projects and keeping clients happy.

From my experience, what you are describing is something few founders are concerned about, because they understand and embrace risk.

On the other hand middle-management is always trying to push their peons to predict the future and accept the liability.

[marcoow]

> On the other hand middle-management is always trying to push their peons to predict the future and accept the liability.

That's bad just middle management then though. It's also why I'm advocating against project managers who would typically/often/sometimes do what you describe here – if you have someone who doesn't actively contribute to the project influence (or dictate in the worst case) timelines, that's deemed to fail from the beginning.

[commandlinefan]

There's a particular bit of wishful thinking endemic to software project managers, in particular: the belief that almost everything useful is also predictable, and that what's left accounts for only a tiny fraction of the overall effort. A bit of reflection should make it obvious that the opposite is true: if it was so easy, somebody else would have done it before. Yet, like every 15-year-old who believes in their heart that they'll grow up to be rich and famous, the manager always assumes that they're just the first person to think of cloning Facebook.