Excellent post! As a software architect, I often played intermediary between product management and engineering teams, translating from high level requirements driven by marketing into high level design specifications. It was often the case that non-expert product managers attempting to bridge the gap would pose their requirements in the form of specific technical approaches, but their (well meaning) overreach meant I had to often ignore the specific proposals to ask what actual customer problem they were attempting to address, and gently suggesting several options that were actually feasible. Without such an intermediary, or equivalent skills in development teams, the problems parodied in the video seem inevitable. Ego can get in the way. Everyone is terrified of not seeming smart enough and so they bluster and bullshit rather than being willing to listen and learn.
I recall reading a Dilbert cartoon on Sunday and then my manager coming in the office on Monday and quoting the PHB in the Sunday cartoon.
I thought he had seen the cartoon and was being intentionally funny.
I laughed, that was worng.
The issue is that there is a game of telephone going on where the intermediate communicators do not understand what they are saying but they are unable to admit it.
The key to Dilbert was in anticipating these mis-communications.
Excellent post! As a software architect, I often played intermediary between product management and engineering teams, translating from high level requirements driven by marketing into high level design specifications. It was often the case that non-expert product managers attempting to bridge the gap would pose their requirements in the form of specific technical approaches, but their (well meaning) overreach meant I had to often ignore the specific proposals to ask what actual customer problem they were attempting to address, and gently suggesting several options that were actually feasible. Without such an intermediary, or equivalent skills in development teams, the problems parodied in the video seem inevitable. Ego can get in the way. Everyone is terrified of not seeming smart enough and so they bluster and bullshit rather than being willing to listen and learn.
I recall reading a Dilbert cartoon on Sunday and then my manager coming in the office on Monday and quoting the PHB in the Sunday cartoon.
I thought he had seen the cartoon and was being intentionally funny.
I laughed, that was worng.
The issue is that there is a game of telephone going on where the intermediate communicators do not understand what they are saying but they are unable to admit it.
The key to Dilbert was in anticipating these mis-communications.