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By Adrian Kosmaczewski, June 7th, 2021
Welcome to the thirty-third issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, dedicated to the subject of Management. In this edition, Graham analyzes the root causes of dysfunctional teams and how to solve them; Adrian argues that the chasm between developers and managers is hurting society as a whole, and it must end; and in the Library section, Graham reviews Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path.
By Graham Lee, June 7th, 2021
It is going to be hard to write anything about management for this month's issue, because the entire field is moribund. There has been no innovation in management for decades, supposed sea changes in thought have either failed to take hold or failed to deliver anything new, and we are all still mired in the industrialist, piecework thinking of Taylor's scientific management and workplace surveillance.
To a large extent, most of the software team managers I met in the course of my career were not able to judge neither the qualities nor the techniques required to create a software artifact. They were incapable of understanding the very work made by the teams I joined, the same work required to complete the software they clicked or touched at the end of each sprint. Yet most of those non-technical managers were by large the most inclined to take decisions that did have a major (usually negative) impact in said work, and not once, but rather very often.
As soon as Adrian and I agreed that Management would be the topic of this issue, I knew that I would share the benefits of Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path. It is the most succinct introduction to software engineering management for both managers and the managed out there.