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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Do I Really Need A Supervisor?
Date: 1997/03/22
Message-ID: <dewar.859061288@merv>#1/1
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Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-03-22T00:00:00+00:00
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Richard O'Keefe said

<<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".>>

Plus lots of other (iin my view) exactly appropriate observations.

Yes, indeed when I say someone is a strong chess player, I mean he is good
at playing chess, not that he can break his opponents neck with a single
karate chop. So, yes strong here is almost a synonym for competence.

I do see the confusion, in that people can easily use the phrase strong
management to refer to intrusive and inflexible management. In fact the
job of a competent manager is to make everything work smoothly without
being seen to be intrusive or inflexible, much as a good teacher following
the Socratic method guides the discussion of a class, without being seen
to be dictating it.