Some companies, more than others, are prone to PMS. It makes everyone cranky, unproductive and just plain miserable. This PMS does not occur once a month—no, no, it occurs constantly. What is this PMS of which I speak? Perpetual Meeting Syndrome.
It is the Sisyphusian cycle of meetings to discuss why something has not been done, the answer to which is usually, “I was in too many meetings discussing why things haven’t been done.” Developers oughtn’t be subjected to this. Developers oughtn’t even be subjected to meetings to discuss what they will develop. A developer’s job is to develop stuff.
Here’s some Pamprin for PMS:
* Tech-savvy project managers. They can answer tech questions and pitch tech solutions. They can make action items to pass on to developers.
* An engineering watchdog. This person, probably the project manager, makes sure that requests to engineering are filtered through her. She prevents developers from getting sucked into meetings.
* Daily checkins from coders. Just a brief summary of what was accomplished that day. Since a developer is not in any meetings he has no excuse for an empty list.
* Weekly action item feeds to coders. Take what the project managers decided and translate it into action items. These items should reappear, completed, on the developers’ daily checkins the following week.
This is sure to be implemented in every company right after global warming, world hunger and Turing’s halting problem are solved.