Earlier quoted context omitted.
> figure out some way to qualify what makes good software engineering I doubt we'll ever be able to distill it to a formula. People ran successful software projects decades ago, long before any methodologies were formally described. And they have failing projects now, even when they use a supposedly good formal methodology. Instead of another alternative to waterfall, scrum, or agile, I'd propose the following ingred…
But what about the technical/professional side of things? I know there's no silver bullet but those of us who have been through a few projects have a pretty good idea of what's going to work and what isn't. We can tell, well in advance, what's going to work and what isn't both in terms of the technical approach and the management process. Agree? If that is the case how do we convert that intuition into something that…
But e.g. how many times have you told a superior something like "This won't work because of math" and then been simply ignored? Until, of course, the system/project goes down in flames.
We need stature that can get around Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bu...):
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
And this amplified restatement:
"...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
Lawyers frequently don't get that. Doctors? Not so sure anymore, the same masters of the universe have been revising the way they have to do medicine (e.g. the Obamacare foretaste in the stimulus bill requiring "meaningful use" of Electronic Medical Records). Scratch that, Obama's utter contempt for doctors was strongly on display while he was barnstorming the nation, e.g.:
"Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. So if they’re looking and you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.'"
Or what about the conceit that a generic MBA can manage anything?
MIT considered this the #1 problem for it to address in the '80s.