Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Third Edition

© Michael Lopp 2016

Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, 10.1007/978-1-4842-2158-7_23

23. The Process Myth

Process is a seven-letter word that begins with P that engineers hate

Michael Lopp¹ 

(1)Los Gatos, California, USA

On the list of ways to generate a guaranteed negative knee-jerk reaction from an engineer, I offer a single word: process.

Folks, in order to make sure that we hit our ship date, we have a new bug triage . . . process.

You’ve heard the groans and you’ve seen the rolling eyeballs and made the fair assumption that engineers are genetically predisposed to hate process. It’s an incorrect assumption that doesn’t add up. Engineers are creatures who appreciate structure, order, and predictability, and the goal of a healthy process is to define ...