Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Chapter 1. About Management

To tell you the truth, I’ve always thought management was kind of a boring subject. Judging by the books I’ve read on the subject, it’s 95 percent common sense and 5 percent warmed-over advice from yester-decade. So why am I leading off this book with the topic of management?

Because, to give the devil its due, most of the high-leverage, high-visibility things that happen in the software field are about management. Most of our failures, for example, are blamed on management. And most of our successes can be attributed to management. In Al Davis’s wonderful book on software principles (1995), he says it very clearly in Principle 127: “Good management is more important than good technology.” Much as I hate to admit ...