Clued or Clueless

In all my career I’ve never met a manager or executive who had even a single clue about how to organise for and run software development.

Such folks spend all their time pretending they have a clue rather than spending any time at all on actually getting a clue. This is as Argyris tells us.

Let’s not be too harsh on them. They live within social systems which reward the appearance of competence, and punish actual competence. Real competence finds no reward except its own. And actually knowing what’s going on becomes a severe career-blocker.

Few indeed are the “healthy” organisations where competence in any discipline is rewarded rather than punished. How much more so in software development, where the excuses are many, as are the rocks under which to hide.

– Bob

Further Reading

Argyris, C. (1991). Teaching Smart People How to Learn. Reflections: The SoL Journal, [online] 4(2), pp.4–15. Available at: /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/teaching-smart-people-how-to-learn-old.pdf

Argyris, C. (2002). Teaching Smart People How to Learn. Reflections: The SoL Journal, [online] 4(2), pp.4–15. Available at: /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/teaching-smart-people-how-to-learnpr-1.pdf