Sure It’s the People – But Which People? by Bruce Nielson

re: Sure It’s the People – But Which People? by Bruce Nielson

Nathan Zaugg — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:20:23 GMT

I just ran across this and thought of this blog post: commons.ora.com/.../Developer_Productivity_Mean_vs._Median

re: Sure It’s the People – But Which People? by Bruce Nielson

BruceNielson — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:19:49 GMT

Excellent points, Nate!

Can I quote you in future posts? :)

I do think you are right about the Project Manager playing a huge role in the success factors. But still, it's only an "influencing" role, not a direct role. But a good project manager can "stack the deck" so to speak.

re: Sure It’s the People – But Which People?

Nathan Zaugg — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:16:11 GMT

Okay, I have been thinking a lot about this post and I have to say that as a programmer this is very frustrating! We get more than our share of blame when something does go south AND we can to very little to affect the outcome.

From my perspective it seems to me that the most important person is the Project Manager. Your list is a list of attributes about a project as success factors, but a good PM can and will bring those to the table. That means that the second most important people are management! In consulting it's twice as many people to satisfy but if management isn't on the right page with the project then starting it in the first place is not advised!

Being a programmer is a tough gig! People want estimates. They will hang you by your thumbnails until you make up a number! Then they want you to track to your estimates. This is also frustrating because the project never unfolds anything like what you estimated so the original estimation items essentially become buckets of time. When you go over the estimate it seems like the assumption is that WE are the ones who made some big mistake or were unproductive or inept! And it's twice as bad if you didn't tell someone before you went over your 5 hour task. At the end of the day your mind is numb from working and if things are going badly everyone hates you!

It's little wonder that there are very few programmers who stick in this field their entire career.

re: Sure It’s the People – But Which People?

Nathan Zaugg — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:29:54 GMT

Hey, Did I work for the project you talk about in the first paragraph?