Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I’ve spent some time on this blog bemoaning the flaws and poor implementations of Agile methodologies so, to be fair, this isn’t about that. I cannot blame Agile for the problems currently weighing on me at my Monkey-Boy-Day-Job. These problems go much deeper. It doesn’t matter what methodology you’re using; you can’t fix stupid.

Like most people, I want to succeed at my job. I want to do well and contribute to good outcomes. I really hate being set up to fail. But management-types don’t seem to grok that concept. So they do things like this:

1. Create a situation wherein you need to do six months of work in six weeks.
2. Ensure that the situation requires something you haven’t done before.
3. Set people to work on it, but
   • Don’t give them details about what it is you want.
   • Pick people who don’t know the systems involved.
4. Once underway, dribble in new and changed requirements.
5. See what happens.

To quote Jayne Cobb, ” Where’s that get fun?”

k