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In an organization where this attitude is prevalent, it is common to see a much higher
value placed on anything that has to do with programming, with a lower value placed on
all other areas of software engineering. If the programming team requests new computers,
often senior managers will not hesitate to spend thousands of dollars on them. Yet the
project manager may be refused permission to spend a few extra hours talking to stake-
holders and users in order to write a vision and scope document, even though it would
save an enormous amount of project time (and only cost the equivalent of a few hundred
dollars of people’s time). When this happens, it’s usually because it is easy to justify any
activity or expense that is done to benefit programming, while all other expenses are
regarded suspiciously.

You Can’t Give Me More Work!
Most of the changes that a project manager makes will increase the workload of other
people. Software engineers, managers, and stakeholders who were not directly involved
in building software will suddenly find themselves expected to attend status and review
meetings, participate in planning and estimation activities, work with someone creating a
vision and scope document or eliciting requirements, or perform other tasks that were
never expected of them before. If you are making these changes, then you are the person
piling additional work onto someone’s already overflowing plate. Not surprisingly, there
are people who will not be happy with this arrangement.

People are often unhappy to be asked to attend meetings, especially in organizations
where most meetings lack direction, focus, or even an agenda. In organizations like this,
the meetings tend to meander. Often they boil down to a discussion between two people
about a topic that has nothing to do with anyone else at the meeting. Sometimes, meet-
ings are called simply to give a captive audience to a senior manager. If you are in an orga-
nization where everyone hates going to meetings, when someone suddenly finds out that
she has to attend your weekly status meeting, she might be unhappy—and provoked into
doing something about it.

A common response from a recipient of this new workload is surprise and shock. It’s very
uncommon for people to have tasks assigned to them by people to whom they do not
report, yet here’s some project manager doing exactly that. Often, when someone is sur-

prised by extra work, he feels especially motivated to take action to remove it from his
plate. He will complain to his boss and to his boss’s boss, and he may even try to go over
your head to get your entire project shut down. When a project manager tries to put new
tools or techniques in place, it is frustrating to encounter resistance from the very people
who will benefit from the practices simply because they seem like extra work. (It is espe-
cially frustrating when team members agree in principle that those practices will reduce
the total effort required to build the project, yet do not agree to adopt them!) Even if you
win the battle and get your senior managers to agree to force him to do the extra work,
you could still lose the war: now a participant in your project cannot be relied upon, and
could cause damage to your project by stonewalling and causing delays. He could even
sour your organization to any future improvements if the senior managers hear only his
complaints and do not see immediate results.

212 CHAPTER NINE