Ask Slashdot: How To Gently Keep Management From Wrecking a Project? 276
New submitter miserly_content writes "I work in a large, hierarchical technology company. I have been developing technical specs for a new strategic and challenging software project, and the project is slowly gathering steam and support. This is already a career building success for me, and everyone acknowledges my technical capabilities. But the program manager is an MBA-type, and wants to bring in new multiple team leaders and consultants. This is not really a surprise, but I feel we are sliding towards a too-many-chiefs-too-few-indians scenario, especially at this early stage. How can I pitch upper management about this issue, without appearing selfish or disruptive? What positive approach can I try with the PM, with whom I have a good working relationship?"
Re:first post (Score:1, Funny)
boobies
No, they were selling t-shirts.
Re:Maybe you are wrong (Score:3, Funny)
I know it's popular on /. to trash anyone with a business degree as a know nothing douchebag, but sometimes perspective outside of the core engineering effort can pay dividends.
Managers who can't rise up by replacing ones above themselves, try to rise up by hiring more flunkies under themselves to crack the whip at. This is an equivalent of cancerous growth in organization, and the reason why middle management is often incompetent.
A large technology company with 'too few indians'? (Score:5, Funny)
Does such a thing exist?
Fight fire with fire (Score:4, Funny)
Go to your program manager's boss and ask to him to assign more program managers to the project. Once the PM finds out what that's like he'll never suggest such a thing again.
Re:PM is right until you're done this (Score:5, Funny)
Nice try, project manager.
Re:solve your problem small (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh, ooh, I just got through basic Scrum / Agile training, so I know the answer to this!
Get everyone committed to using Scrum methodology for your project before they really know what it means.
Then assign yourself as Product Owner and your boss as Scrum Master for the duration of the project.
Then send all the other chickens to Scrum training, so they can find out that they're chickens. They'll spend all the rest of their time rooting out all of the other chickens in your organization to keep them from clucking up your very important work.
After your project gets delivered on time without interference, and everyone can give themselves a pat on the back from running interference. Everyone gets a promotion! (which is all they really wanted in the first place)