Information Hunt

Written by Jamie Friday, 03 June 2011 08:02

I was working last week at a clients and, of course, the management of impediments came up.  I said to some managers and middle managers that it could be wise to think of the project we are working on not as a software project but as a huge information gathering exercise that just so happened to deliver a project.  The logic is similar to test-driven-development, where the aim is to design code and the test suite is a nice side-effect.

A manager has an interest in a project succeeding but is probably more interested in creating an environment that will create successful projects on a regular basis.  The information that one project kicks up can be invaluable to the future of the organisation's eco-system (provided that the management team are indeed using the information).  And so, to the horror of a lot of hard working developers, their project might be a sacrificial lamb.  Could be like a training wheels marriage.

Running a project that tracks an organisation’s deficiencies is like injecting a radioactive material into a network of pipes just to see what might happen.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with this.