Why Project Managers Bother Me

Filed in archive Personal on March 8, 2006

Someone shared something with me yesterday that helped me understand why certain people act as they do during IT projects. He sent me a link to the article: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? It was one of those things where the little light bulb turned on above my head.

Go read it for yourself, but the nutshell version is that people tend to try and get involved in projects if things are easy to understand so they can prove they are doing their job. However, if something is large and complex they tend to leave those doing their work alone.

All this time during my career in IT I've been trying to find ways to easily explain things to non-technical people. Maybe I would be more productive if I left people feeling overwhelmed by the size and complexity of a project. It is a theory at least and one I will keep in my back pocket. Although it seems to me it would be wrong to act in such a way during a project but you can't make everyone happy. We could call it the art of Machiavellian Project Management for technical people. The underlying theme being that non-technical people stay that way for the good of the project being worked on.