Monkey Management
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Monkey Management
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Re: Monkey Management
#2[dead]
Re: Monkey Management
#3Someone could take ownership of the project and make decisions instead of letting a monkey run around.
Re: Monkey Management
#4best solutions come when those that own the problem statement get enough info to slightly modify the problem
ie., it is far easier to make men be cleaner in urinals, than to make the cleaners more efficient
but if you can’t be the person to place a little bee on each stall you’re shit out of luck
Re: Monkey Management
#5Someone could take ownership of the project and make decisions instead of letting a monkey run around.
The organization on the article is highly dysfunctional. But it's not going to be solved by higher management getting busy with the details of the project's work.
The problem here is how the work is divided, with everybody disempowered and turned into helpless cogs. If the goal was to prohibit any kind of improvement, they wouldn't make such a perfect attempt... And yet, that's the "normal" way to organize software development.
Re: Monkey Management
#6Someone could take ownership of the project and make decisions instead of letting a monkey run around.
The organization on the article is highly dysfunctional. But it's not going to be solved by higher management getting busy with the details of the project's work. The problem here is how the work is divided, with everybody disempowered and turned into helpless cogs. If the goal was to prohibit any kind of improvement, they wouldn't make such a perfect attempt... And yet, that's the "normal" way to organize software d…
This was my impression of the article as well. Nobody can agree on what they're all trying to improve in the product and why, everyone's just trying to avoid being fired while working on their own stuff.
Re: Monkey Management
#7[deleted]
Re: Monkey Management
#8This article does a good job of touching on how empire-style organizational structures are dysfunctional.
The reason monkey keeps jumping around is because there are ZERO directly responsible owners of the delivery of the cross-functional outcome for the business.
In my company, we have PM, Sr. PM, Director of Product, VP of product - interfacing with Designer, Sr. Designer, Design manager, Sr. Design manager, director of design - interfacing with Eng 2, Sr Eng, Eng manager, Sr Eng manager, Eng director, Sr. Eng director, Eng VP.
Nobody can tell who owns the final decisions, decisions cannot be bubbled up, every management chain is only focused on their own goals. There is no decision-making structure at all. Inevitably projects get delayed or there are unaccounted issues. Then each management chain stack ranks their reports for not achieving goals - never once accepting that the empire structure never made any decisions when it was necessary.
The empire structure has to go. It is dysfunctional, doesn't work, and only causes grief to everyone involved. Tasks are unnecessarily hard. It is easy to do. Just make your highest paid people directly responsible for outcomes. Give them the freedom to pull people from various org functions to get a project to success.
Re: Monkey Management
#9First thought, not having worked with more than 15 people simultaneously in many years:
Oof.
Re: Monkey Management
#10Someone could take ownership of the project and make decisions instead of letting a monkey run around.
It is not an ownership problem only, the issue, which is very common, is that you need someone who can connect the dots and know that if he/she doesn't, the ball will go back and forth infinitely, and far from the soccer goal.
One profile that fits here is a generalist and/or program manager who had strong experience and skills in a specific field (e.g. developing software). The generalist can talk about sales, marketing, operations, and business and match with real experience. He/she knows how to move the ball forward.
Ownership alone only provides illusions.