“Here’s the thing,” my friend says. The scenario script called for the testers to use features that were never mentioned in the requirements document . Project Managers Are Too Structured. Seriously. Unless specifically stated otherwise, thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine. When I raised this point, “Allison” explained that the night before she had been brainstorming about features she thought our application ought to have had, and added them to the test. Published at DZone with permission of Alexandra Levit. “I once had a project that was completed successfully – on schedule and in budget. To this he replied: “No way.”. . But PMs’ meetings are so frequent and long that they are always cutting into development time. They create cost and hourly estimates for tasks and then hold employees to them even when the scope of the project or the needs of the client change. So, if you are a PM yourself or do PM as part of your role, it’s probably a good idea to proactively address the concerns. To understand why developers and designers hate meetings and interruptions, you have to understand the difference between a maker's and a manager's schedule (as Paul Graham observed in his famous essay on time management).. People who create things (designers, writers, developers) operate under a maker's schedule, which is completely different from a manager's. “But if you don’t have a good team to start, you already have a problem that PM won’t solve.” My friend is personally fed up with PMs that don’t trust his process. “There are loads of reports, documents, and charts that don’t do anything except show that the PM is working.”, PMs call too many meetings and spend too much time tasking every aspect of every project. If your team members are happy to see your face or your emails and welcome your input and support, then you’ve done all the right things to counteract the potentially negative PM persona. They guard their power carefully and hold their cards close to the vest when threatened or stressed. And Your IT Smells Funny!” ). and if they were never in the requirements document then they never could have been turned into code. My friend says that the majority of his interactions with PMs involve creating useless frameworks around work that’s already being done fairly seamlessly. This is precisely why we hate them and have no respect for them whatsoever. Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own. “Not being able to take “no” as an answer.”. See the original article here. If there were project delays, grievances, his approach was to blame the developers. She said she understood and told the testers to ignore that section because it didn’t apply right now. While these sound like surface level complaints, they represent a core problem: the disconnect between software engineers and project managers. I wish I could say that “Allison’s” behavior was an isolated incident, but it isn’t. Project management is not technical at ALL, but the hardest part of it is keeping communication lines open between different teams, … manager (/ˈmanɪdʒə/) (noun): The person who cares about nothing about what you’re doing other than when you will finish it. But a couple of days later, she wrote an email to me and my supervisor explaining that the test had failed– specifically citing the same features she had added at the last minute. . One Reply to “Why Developers Hate Project Managers” amills says: March 14, 2014 at 7:06 am Someone pointed out to me that all the project manager names I listed in this blog entry happen to be female. Explain why the project benefits the organization and what the expectations are from the top down. Naturally, she didn’t mention in the email to my supervisor that those features had never been included in the requirements document, and I spent a good portion of my morning explaining to my supervisor that I was a web developer, not a mind reader. Project Managers have written vast tomes on how to help Developers accomplish their work. The fact it doesn’t make sense is not my fault. “PMs always seem to be doing busywork,” he says. Agree on a meeting structure that’s conducive to productivity, and make it clear how, when, and why you will be “checking in” during the development process. When I had a private word with “Allison’s” supervisor about her duplicitous behavior, she told me I was “overreacting” and being “too sensitive.” Gee, that sounds both familiar and patronizing. “But we are the ones closer to the work and what actually needs to be done, so sometimes they just need to back off. “Not being able to say "no" to clients”. You may have heard these gripes or even uttered them yourself. Way too many meetings”. “We data architects are generally assigned six hours a day for development, and get to spend the remaining two hours doing meetings, phone calls, emails, and admin. Since I write about IT project management all the time, I recently asked him if he’d ever consider a PM job. Marketing Blog. In short, I’ve worked with many project managers over two decades and noticed a “Say Anything To Get What You Want” mentality appears to be a common shared trait. Trust good developers to do their work without any micro-management, and ensure they understand why taking their time on seemingly useless tasks is … And finally, when you do intervene, don’t be a jerk about it. It seems to me that more upfront communication from PMs would go a long way. While every IT project team can benefit from some structure, my friend feels that PMs in general err on the side of micromanagement.
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