Lynn Twiss

Recently David Lowe-Rogstad of Substance forwarded me an email pointing me in the direction of a presentation at FlashForward. The presentation was titled: Project Management from the Developer’s Perspective. By: Stacey Mulcahy of BitchWhoCodes.com. With my experience being a project manager and having been a developer as well, I was eager to dive into it.

The presentation itself is very light-hearted and comedically points out the truth to many facets of miscommunication between management and implementation teams. (An unfortunate product of compartmentalized, bucketed, need-to-know and traditional process coupled with project managers that simply are working for a paycheck and not the passion for all things web) I’ve seen these styles of PMs. They are everything she pokes fun at and worse. There are a lot of them in Portland, which is sad and holds back many teams and work.

Here is an excerpt from the presentation that I found particularly humorous:

Project managers all think of themselves like this guy:

Whereas, most developers think of you as this guy:

It’s true. I’ll also back it up that I’ve worked right next to a Lumbergh or two in Portland. Now, I have my faults as a producer, I’ll admit. But, I wanted to personalize this a bit.

I think of myself as a bald amalgamation of these two guys:

You see, I think that I’m the cynical semi-calm Spade, but outwardly I’m pretty sure that at times I come across as a ham-handed Chris Farley. In all cases, I am truly trying to help.

However, what I really strive to be is this guy:

(insert_allegory)

Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred. There are qualities in him that I strive to attain and here are a couple reasons:

Alfred is an adviser, mentor and assistant. He’s completely content with taking care of the crappy shit that gets in the way of being a superhero. He’ll give you advise and solid reasoning why he is dishing it out, but he plans to mitigate the damage when the client or (in some cases) you don’t listen; because frankly speaking: why would the superhero listen, when Alfred himself has never been one? Alfred is also master of knowing what you need before you have to ask. So, when the times comes, you are empowered with everything needed to succeed.

At the end of the day, he’ll do anything for you. Anything…

…like in absence of superhero gadgets – grab a golf club and come to your rescue if you need it – maybe possibly even lift a flaming beam off you even though he’s physically old-and-busted:

Alfred didn’t walk into the flaming mansion and say: “Hold on Bruce, I’ll call Lucius Fox and see if he has anything that can help here!” He makes do with what he has because: deep down he loves what you do and knows that sometimes action is needed over words. And because – goddamn it – he loves you and wants to live in the world that you are changing for the better.

Maybe it’s just the developer in me talking and not the producer, but I agree with thebitchwhocodes and want to make change for her and the teams I’m involved with.