Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself

Epilogue. Software Engineers Are the Pioneers of Knowledge Work

This excerpt is courtesy of the Computer History Museum, “Oral History of Watts Humphrey,” 2009¹

¹ Interview conducted by Grady Booch. Available online at the Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102702107.

Peter Drucker, the famed writer, professor, and management consultant, wrote extensively about knowledge work and knowledge workers. He made a point that I think is enormously perceptive: You can’t manage knowledge workers. They have to manage themselves.

What’s astounding to me is, one, that’s a terribly perceptive point, and two, no one has picked up on it anywhere. Everywhere you turn someone says, “Sure, that’s true. They’ve got to ...