Chapter13.Politics

Chapter 13. Politics

In Chapter 8, "Getting It Out the Door," I discussed putting together a repeatable build process. Some software development managers read this, in an earlier incarnation of the chapter, and took me to task for not sufficiently condemning "politics" as one of the root causes of the difficulty. This revealed to me a misunderstanding about the role of politics, not just in software development but also in the management of technical organizations in general.

Why is politics such a touchy subject? Given that it exists, can you do anything about it?

Most software managers I know have had two diametrically opposed ways of dealing with it. One group takes the position that politics is poison and attempts to remove anything that even smells "political" from their organization. This quasi-religious fervor is unhealthy in its own way. The other group pretends that politics doesn't exist. Of course, ignoring it doesn't make it go away, so they have the problem of dealing with something that they pretend isn't there. Neither group can be successful.

Of course, to deal with this in any kind of rational way requires that we have a common definition of the very word. Without a common working vocabulary, we can't make much progress. So I begin my treatment of this controversial subject by setting some context.