Well what the article is advocating is "management by exception" - basically a callback system. Where as what you seem to be arguing is a polling system.
It sounds like you want to regularly poll each of the developers, asking; "How's it going? Are you done yet? Any problems?". Where as the articles advocates a callback system, where the developer tells the manager that an event has occurred; "I'm done. I have a question"
In general a callback system is always going to make more effective use of resources than a polling system, both in software design and in management.
All this theory is fine. However the practicality is, some developers are never going to work in a 'callback' manner. You need to prompt and ask them and occasionally pull them out of whatever rabbit hole they have disappeared down. Others are going to absolutely chafe if you keep asking them for progress updates. The difference between an ok manager and a great one lies in being able to understand the human side of things and deal with each person as an individual, rather than just blindly following one theory or another.
And until a certain point, a programmer may not recognize when the code is out of hand. Even still, I sometimes spend an absurd amount of time working on something that seemed trivial, because it spent the whole day looking five minutes out of reach. Or a week looking an hour or two away. Those times don't generate callbacks because they don't seem like big enough problems.
Though if a manager polled me a couple of times that week, the second time I was the same distance into the same task, it would be a major trouble sign.
Comments
Well what the article is advocating is "management by exception" - basically a callback system. Where as what you seem to be arguing is a polling system.
It sounds like you want to regularly poll each of the developers, asking; "How's it going? Are you done yet? Any problems?". Where as the articles advocates a callback system, where the developer tells the manager that an event has occurred; "I'm done. I have a question"
In general a callback system is always going to make more effective use of resources than a polling system, both in software design and in management.
All this theory is fine. However the practicality is, some developers are never going to work in a 'callback' manner. You need to prompt and ask them and occasionally pull them out of whatever rabbit hole they have disappeared down. Others are going to absolutely chafe if you keep asking them for progress updates. The difference between an ok manager and a great one lies in being able to understand the human side of things and deal with each person as an individual, rather than just blindly following one theory or another.
And until a certain point, a programmer may not recognize when the code is out of hand. Even still, I sometimes spend an absurd amount of time working on something that seemed trivial, because it spent the whole day looking five minutes out of reach. Or a week looking an hour or two away. Those times don't generate callbacks because they don't seem like big enough problems.
Though if a manager polled me a couple of times that week, the second time I was the same distance into the same task, it would be a major trouble sign.