Recap

Many software managers I talked to about this mountain-climbing metaphor pointed out that I missed an important point: scaling. No pun intended there; what they mean is that the general principles remain regardless of the size of the mountain or the size of the project. Things change in the details, of course: a weekend ascent of a 4,000-meter peak by a team of 10 is different from an assault on Everest. On the other hand, violation of the general principles will cause either expedition to fail. While very large software projects need somewhat different organization, one wonders if they would not be more successful if they were modeled on the small-team approach, only with more teams. The interesting issue in both cases is the tradeoff between increased communications overhead with more teams, versus the intrinsic failure modes that seem to set in when teams grow too large. In any event, this mountaineering metaphor did stimulate a lot of really interesting discussion on the true nature of a software development project.

I am still a member of the Swiss Alpine Club, but most of my climbing feats these days involve extricating myself from especially deep sand traps on various golf courses around the world.

The next chapter deals with some other ideas on general management that I have accumulated throughout the years.