How can you avoid building a Soviet-style product? Make sure your project plan includes tasks explicitly focused on nonfunctional requirements. That sounds easy, but consider that most Soviet-style systems got that way because nonfunctional qualities were simply ignored.

In organizations where eye contact applies, urgency and complexity are trump cards that can be used to secure co-location of the project team.

They have an instinctive sense of time urgency.

Silence-gives-consent commitments are bad for everyone. The two parties inevitably attach differing priorities to the work, and it’s all bound to end in tears.

All roads lead to design.

Dead Fish

The journalist does not feel guilty for not having prevented the crash. That was someone else’s job.

A pattern of consistently focusing on effort over progress sometimes reveals a manager who does not comprehend the difference between steering and navigating.

“We need to distinguish between cost reduction and organizational bulimia.”