Re: Do I Really Need A Supervisor?

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>Well I understand that some people regard the idea of strong management
>as intimidating, and that's fine, different people work in different ways.

I think the major difference here is that when Robert Dewar says "strong
management is essential to software quality" he means strong COMPETENT
management, where competence is part of what it _means_ to be "strong".

Take, for example, a software project I recently heard of.
The organisation developed a web-based tool to be used at two sites.
The tool was "tested" and passed by the manager.
Trouble was, it was only tested at one site.
It caused chaos at the other site, which, having had X-terminals for
longer than the first site, had a lot of black-and-white ones.
The tool had never been tested on black-and-white boxes.

The development team were rather sarcastic about people being so stupid
as to use black and white machines, and the "foreman" who screamed about
the problem was told that he shouldn't be admitting to the users that
there was any problem.  He kept screaming and eventually a black-and-
white version was provided.

Was that strong management?  Well, the users were given absolutely no
alternative to using the tool.  And the "foreman" felt threatened by
the attitude of the developers.  So that is very like the kind of
situation that other people have been describing.

But it's not at all like the kind of situation Robert Dewar has in mind,
I believe.  I think he would say that management which doesn't ensure
that the tool is tested on _all_ the platforms the users are forced to
use it on is not strong in the sense he has in mind, however forceful
it may be.

_Forceful_ but technically incompetent management is not only not
essential to software quality, it is inimical to it.  (And technical
competence here means competence _appropriate to the level of
management_; I don't think a manager needs to be able to cut code in
the language the project is using, but the manager _does_ need to
understand the _software engineering_ issues.)
-- 
Will maintain COBOL for money.
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.