Evidence-Based Management Fads

Over the years, in the course of my work I have attended many management courses. Consequently I was interested to read this by Derek Lowe:

...   The contempt that most of the scientific staff has for "modern management techniques" is hard to underestimate. Problem is, we're used to having to prove our hypotheses, and show data (with appropriate controls, yet) in support of them. But I've suspected for years that most of the management fads that sweep through the world have nothing to back them up at all, ...

Lowe is talking about management fads in the drug industry but much the same holds for the software development industry. 

I particularly remember being shown a graph supposedly proving the effectiveness of Fagan inspections but which consisted of just a wiggly rising line.  The actual data points that the line was drawn through were not shown, so it was impossible to get any idea of the quantity or scatter of the points, or of the statistical significance of the rise in the line.  It might be that the person who drew the graph was ignorant of what is needed to convince people trained in science, or it may be that they were deliberately trying to  cover up the inadequacy of their data.  Either way, the presentation was seriously weakened by that graph.  This a pity, as I now understand that Michael Fagan gathered quite a lot of statistical data which he used to convince the management of IBM of the the effectiveness of his technique.  It was just that we weren't shown any of that data.

I suspect that the data that the SEI CMM framework was based on would not stand up to close scrutiny.   At least, I cannot remember seeing any convincing graphs in any of the CMM presentations or books.

The OS Titanic?

According to Paul Thurrot, Microsoft seem to be having some difficulties with Windows Vista, their intended successor to the Windows XP operating system.   My feeling is that it is, as C.A.R.Hoare said of the programming language Ada, "doomed to succeed".

The Search by John Battelle

An account of the rise of Google with some mentions of Altavista, Yahoo! and other search engine companies. I found it most interesting where it was covering the early days; the last few chapters of speculation about the future of search, I thought less good, in particular, I don't think there will be any financial incentive for the creation of a historical archive of the web.

The success of Google can be seen as an example of a technically clean solution (the PageRank algorithm) triumphing over messier, technically inferior ones. I admit, though, that the good business judgement of the Google founders also had something to do with it (also, the algorithm that Google uses has probably now evolved into something hideously complex).

Google China

I am sure that IBM had good intentions back in 1933.

The Effects of Firefox and Open Office on Microsoft

Yesterday I came across the following:

I think a lot of people misinterpret the importance of Firefox.  Firefox is not important because it may replace or substantially reduce the Internet Explorer monopoly.  Firefox is important because it forces Microsoft to innovate.  The Internet Explorer team has been reformed and work is starting on the first serious upgrade to the product for years. This is a good thing for everbody, whether you like Microsoft or not.

Simon Johnson (http://www.ckwop.me.uk/)

This reminded me of something I read about the importance of OpenOffice to Sun: they are using it to compete with the vastly profitable Microsoft Office so that Microsoft will be less able to subsidise their loss-making server software which is displacing Sun from their specialist market.  I think it was in an essay by Joel Spolsky or Paul Graham that I read this .