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Software development requires servant leaders

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Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#31

Post by lazyjones »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #20
hguhghuff wrote: post #10

Maybe. I think there’s all sorts of leaders and all sorts of ways and configurations projects can have. IMO the most inspired software is the implementation of the vision of one person who had an artists/visionaries clear idea of what they want to create, who listens to input and brings in new ideas from others, but has absolute control over the decisions. Servant leaders of software projects I’m guessing has the pot…

There's no one-size-fits-all management style. Evil megalomaniacs can also have success. It's good to have humility, but that's true for individual contributors, not just leaders. As you point out, if a leader is too humble, at especially at Big Corp Inc, products can end up designed by committee, an ugly Mr. Potato Head that everyone hates. It'd be nice if success required 1-3 specific personality traits but they ca…

> There's no one-size-fits-all management style.

I guess someone has to tell the Agile people, who are obsessed with rules and formalisms, about this.

Leaders need experience to cope with different situations. If a team wants a good leader, it should choose him/her based on his/her successful projects instead of relying on FotM Agile concepts and the candidate‘s willingness to adopt them.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#32

Post by phakding »

Why does software industry keep coming up with this sort of thing all the time? I worked as structural engineer before becoming software engineer and we never had to invent different kind of leadership and procedures or change office floor plans or hire outsider non-engineers as our (scrum) masters, or talk about the client as stake holders etc.

Sorry about hurting your agile feelings!

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#33

Post by jrs95 »

gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

Yeah I don’t think he meant “you don’t find in other industries” as “you don’t find in ANY other industries”.

I mean, you’re “disgusted”? Really? Reading all this seriously makes me think you need a vacation or something.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#34

Post by ordinaryperson »

lazyjones wrote: post #31
ordinaryperson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no one-size-fits-all management style. Evil megalomaniacs can also have success. It's good to have humility, but that's true for individual contributors, not just leaders. As you point out, if a leader is too humble, at especially at Big Corp Inc, products can end up designed by committee, an ugly Mr. Potato Head that everyone hates. It'd be nice if success required 1-3 specific personality traits but they ca…

> There's no one-size-fits-all management style. I guess someone has to tell the Agile people, who are obsessed with rules and formalisms, about this. Leaders need experience to cope with different situations. If a team wants a good leader, it should choose him/her based on his/her successful projects instead of relying on FotM Agile concepts and the candidate‘s willingness to adopt them.

Obsessing over any rule pattern, whether it's Agile, Lean, Waterfall, etc., is, of course, stupid.

Those patterns are designed to help groups work together more efficiently, not lord over them like the gods of Olympus.

Assuming you've already explained your frustration to your manager, might be time to seek a new opportunity...

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#35

Post by brlewis »

eggie wrote: post #2

In my experience it is rarely enough to just "lead" more thoughtfully, which seems to be what the author here is promoting. Software development does not just require servant leaders in the helping sense, but in the working sense. The best leaders in software and technical domains are also those who can write (either code or ideas) better than anyone else. They have the power to move the project forward on their own,…

The best leaders in software and technical domains are also those who can write (either code or ideas) better than anyone else.

Do you really believe that? When you're interviewing someone to be your manager, is that what you look for? I don't. I look for communication skills, career development ideas, and evidence that they stay cool under pressure. Software development experience is definitely a plus, but I don't look for someone as a manager who can code better than anyone else.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#36

Post by ellius »

gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

Software engineers seem to be prone to this sort of thinking in general. I know I was at first. I think it's common to just not be especially familiar with the practice of science, with other types of engineering, to not have exposure to other industries and thus have no other frame of reference, and to just be young and inexperienced. It's very easy to look around at your own experience and think "this is so complex and requires immense amounts of thought and coordination" and to somehow think that's unique to your situation.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#37

Post by jdmichal »

shriver wrote: post #30
gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

While I agree with you that software projects aren't unique in having difficulty trying to estimate things, I think that emotionally it's different. If you're digging a tunnel and hit a seam of unobtanium you can go to your boss and point at the seam and say 'Look at this big rock - this big rock is very hard, we had no way of knowing it was here but now we know we have a problem". That is very different from going t…

You will never know what you don't know. That doesn't change. The question is, what do you do about it? That tunneling project probably did account encountering different materials, but maybe not for unobtainium. If the area is known for unobtainium, that's obviously a research miss. If this is the first seam ever encountered within 500 miles, that's straight up unexpected findings. Most situations usually lie somewhere in between.

You can always do more research, but research is at the cost of getting things done. So you balance that, with the understanding that sometimes you will go into projects with too little research. And no matter how much research you do, you will occasionally get genuine unexpected findings while doing the work that cause you to stop and go back into research mode.

EDIT: I mean, just watch those DIY shows some. Almost every episode, there is something "unexpected". Foundation work, roof work, load bearing walls, pipes and vents in walls, electrical or plumbing needs updating, etc. And it rarely ever actually effects their timeline, because they've done it enough to model that something unexpected is probably going to happen.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#38

Post by gregoriol »

shriver wrote: post #30
gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

While I agree with you that software projects aren't unique in having difficulty trying to estimate things, I think that emotionally it's different. If you're digging a tunnel and hit a seam of unobtanium you can go to your boss and point at the seam and say 'Look at this big rock - this big rock is very hard, we had no way of knowing it was here but now we know we have a problem". That is very different from going t…

You are referring to non-engineering managers, which will also happen in other industries, this depends more on the size of the company I'd say.

Also, if you are really the only one to understand (if you are the only tech in a startup for example), then part of your job is actually to explain.

Problems hit by developers are imho the same kinds that you describe with rocks: something unexpected has happened, we didn't/couldn't see it coming because of this and this, we need to do/change this and this, ... or maybe the risk was already considered in the estimate.

One big difference I was thinking about is that in the software industry nobody dies if something goes wrong. In building a tunnel, or shipping or many other industries, if you don't consider the risks well enough and ahead, someone might die.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#39

Post by alex_anglin »

gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

A key difference is that people have been sailing for thousands of years and tunneling for hundreds. We've been developing software for decades now and are learning how to do it much more quickly than we're learning new ways of sailing or tunneling. In that regard, it's a creative process and more akin to writing a book than the examples you mention. Sure, risk assessment and management are all well and good - when they're practiced, but when it comes to doing something new (i.e. not writing a simple CRUD app in the software world), seeing it as a mechanical process is what leads to these tensions.

Re: Software development requires servant leaders

#40

Post by xb1010 »

jdmichal wrote: post #29
gregoriol wrote: post #26

While overall the article is interesting, I'm really disgusted by two sentences: "In software it’s common to have something estimated at a day take a week instead." and "The inherent inaccuracy of software estimates creates extra tension that you don’t find in other industries." Oh, poor thing, you feel so special by being a software engineer? Have you never heard of construction projects taking many times the estima…

It also does not help at all that software "estimates" are typically just sticking a finger in the air and seeing how hard the wind is blowing at the moment. How many engineers are doing things like using real numbers from previous work to build models before estimating? Do we really think that every project is such a unique snowflake that we can't build models? You don't even need that much data, as long as you're u…

Most projects I work on indeed consider themselves unique disruptive snowflakes.

It is impossible to give estimates for such projects, since established prior art is frowned upon.

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