Inspired by the brilliant book by Paul Watzlawick "The
Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious (The Pursuit of Unhappiness)" I
would like to share with you some tips on how to be inefficient with your
software projects. We all dwell continuously on what to do so as to finalize
projects on time and within budget or succeed with a software product rollout.
That's well and good but I guess at least some of you got bored of all of that
and wonder what path one should follow to screw-up things badly. Be blessed all
of you! and read here my few tips that will surely bring about disaster:
1) Fill in your teams with contractors
exclusively but beware of hiring teams! The people you hire must not have ever
worked with each other. Sit then back relaxed and wait for results. A bunch of
individuals who don't feel connected to your company will spend hours on deciding
upon who's smarter than other or on producing just for the sake of sheer
production. Be sure outstanding results are guaranteed!
2) Stay away from any silly thoughts that good engineering
skills, team building and a decentralised process that lets people sort out the details comes in handy. Instead, follow the rule which made successful projects possible. Namely:
there is nothing better than a step by step deterministic process where
individuals detached from the real work like architects, process specialists or
program/ project managers will decide upon next steps concerning any aspect of a project. There is a tiny caveat by this rule which is that some members of
the club mentioned earlier might be not as detached from the real work as you wish.
Clearly this must be changed if screwing-up is what you have in mind!
3) Follow always common sense and
make rational thinking based on factual data the worst enemy of yours.
4) Put off issues to later
stages and resolve immediately only the most obvious ones. After all business
may change her mind later on so don't bother.
5) it's said "don't shoot the
messenger" as you may have guessed already do the opposite
6) Think big and opt for massive
development and gigantic releases from the very beginning. Wait until you get
(check out point 1) all people necessary to carry out your vision. Choose
programs instead small projects and get all your colleagues engaged by sending
out regular news on your big endeavour. Communists argued that quantity becomes quality. This thought among other ones made them fail miserably and so you will my brother.
