I found this video a month ago, that talks about developers and the change request process. It is all a joke, but a joke based on an absolute and painful truth: Software Project Managers sucks!. I have to say, most of the times, we do.
Every time I present a conference about software development process or software project management I said: It should not be that way. Developers are passionated workers that love coding -otherwise they will not spend such amount of hours in front of a display!! right? – However, corporation era talks about how we can make people do more for less -this is the most awful expression of what corporation era is. However as “The Corporation” films presents, the whole idea is to drain workers capacity until they cannot produce as much as we want.
Bad Project Managers believes that good planning is to execute the project within the schedule -by schedule I meant, keep the deadlines. However, good planners knows that schedule is not about dates, is about effort, that can be translated into work hours -at this point I can include myself as Bad Project Manager. However I do sacrifice the deadline over the developers personal hours. Why? It is a simple thing, I believe that developers have code rush hours. I felt it that way when I was developer. I cannot be 100% of the time thinking on the same thing for more than 4 hours, but if I can concentrate -and the environment lets me- I can just immerse myself into “the matrix” (i.e. the only thing I see is code). Good experienced developers can do it faster and more times in a day than a rookie. Those hours will produce better lines of code and less errors than any other time. So why you push your developers to the edge if you will not have support of the quality of work?
Keep your coders working extra hours will not produce better software, will produce MORE lines of codes, but also, MORE errors, and for sure, MORE stress.
BTW. The link to the video “Hug a Developer Today! @ YouTube“