Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!athertn!jimb From: jimb@athertn.Atherton.COM (Jim Burke) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Information Systems is an Engineering Discipline Message-ID: <12686@athertn.Atherton.COM> Date: 14 Sep 89 18:39:16 GMT References: <6429@hubcap.clemson.edu> <10835@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> Reply-To: jimb@athertn.UUCP (Jim Burke) Organization: Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 55 In article <10835@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> diamond@riks. (Norman Diamond) writes: >_Business Week_ writes: >> Put senior, nontechnical management in charge of the project to >> help ensure that it is finished on time and within budget. >In article <6429@hubcap.clemson.edu> wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe) writes: >> Rubbish! Managing a large information system development project is >> a professional skill requiring significant technical and engineering >> background. >Absolutely true. Business Week's advice results in products that don't >work. I would like to state this even more emphatically. Business Week seems to cater to all the proffessional managers in the U.S. It places a premium on MBA type managers for all aspects of managing the corporate world. I have worked with projects headed by proffessional managers. They seldom succeed (if ever). Unfortunately, the only way to get into a position of being a competent manager is to get a technical degree, work a few years (long enough to become technically competent) and then go and get an MBA. It is unfortunate that, in the U.S., you must climb the corporate management ladder in order to have a voice. Precious few technically competent people do this. In other countries, namely Japan, the senior engineer has a voice and is highly respected. A manager of finance would never presume to tell him how he should build his product. Unfortunately, engineers do not have a voice in most U.S. companies when the decisions are made. You can have a Phd in engineering and 20 years of experience and some snivelling little Harvard MBA will set the parameters within which the project will proceed, often times encroaching very heavily into technical issues. I would assert that a highly experienced engineer understands his market far better than some recent MBA graduate. I know of one specific company that was totally ruined (ultimately was taken over for peanuts) because the president (who was fairly technical himself) placed most of the control in the hands of a young V.P. who was three years out of Harvard. (Sorry to pick on Harvard, but if they produce a fair number of bozo's , what are the rest of the pack doing?). Anyway, this guy proceeded to piss off the entire technical organization, the customer base, and anyone else he came into contact with because he fundamentally didn't understand that the engineering business is very different than banking, or retailing, or manufacturing, or anything else he had encountered in his vast three years. Anyway, what else would you expect Business Week to say??? -- ****** Views expressed herin are my own ******* Jim Burke - consultant 408) 734-9822 | I'll stop posting when they pry my jimb@Atherton.COM | cold, dead fingers from the smoking {decwrl,sun,hpda,pyramid}!athertn!jimb | keyboard.