Presentation: Tweet"Management Myths: are we getting any better at this?"

In the 37 years since the Mythical Man Month was published it's easy to think the rules are different today. So much has been learned and written about how to create and run successful software projects surely we must pretty much have the recipe by now.

As an industry we've certainly tried hard: the many methods, tools and processes invented over the decades all try to manage the fundamental complexities of both software and people.

At the same time useful evidence is hard to come by. Software productivity, size and complexity are all probably impossible to measure: cause and effect are difficult to separate and bias is pervasive.

As a result we've often created a mishmash of home spun philosophy, over simplifications, silver bullets, cargo cults and one size fits all methodologies. Meanwhile with ever increasing business involvement in project work knowing why we work the way we do is increasingly important.

In this session I'll explore the evidence (and the myths) behind some of our favourite software process and management practices including; the costs of pairing, the value of estimates, how we set expectations and write contracts, how we pay and reward success plus how we operate at scale and run distributed teams.