Realistic Irrationality

When faced with management's abdication of responsibility for their own decisions, the pragmatic developer will be faced with a decision: to live in the manager's fantasy world, which may involve constantly beating their head against a brick wall or looking for greener pastures, full of craftsmen wanting to deliver software on-time, that works, and is maintainable. This must be closely related to the management style which is unable to prioritize. The hallmark of this occurs during the negotiation desperation of a late project; trying to reign in project scope and attempting to decide which features to cut from the current iteration. When the question is, 'Which features are the highest priority? ' an answer of 'They're all top priority' is not only suspect but probably irrational. The trade offs between better, faster, cheaper are not to be trifled with; this article at softwarereality.com has a good take on the subject. If only this was a tall tale meant to scare young developers; sadly I've experienced this one myself. Feel free to send me your 'Irrational Management' stories, they make good telling at those Agile 'standups' like ghost stories around the campfire...

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