Pro Developer - Optimize Your View

What's that you say? I've just clearly proven that it's not your fault? Nice try. And pass me a pretzel, will you? Projects fail for an unbelievably simple reason. Extremely intelligent and otherwise talented programmers time and again make the naïve assumption that if it's not about the code, it's not their job. In modern air to air combat, a jet fighter pilot who finds himself close enough to his opponent to fight it out with machine guns has already missed critical opportunities to solve the problem from a safe distance with long range missiles. And so it is with programmers. If you find yourself in Overtime City with a guaranteed release disaster right around the corner, you screwed up long before then by failing to control your situation before it controlled you. Ouch. Can I say that? Well, maybe I should at least have offered you a pretzel first.

Your view of the software development process dictates what you do, and do not do, in the course of your work week. If you believe that everything beyond coding is "not my job", then you and your project will without question fall prey to the strong and illogical forces that sweep through the corporate world. However, the follies of marketing and management can both be minimized by the savvy programmer. For every bone headed thing that these rocket scientists can throw at us, there is a counter. Manage the problems early enough in the game, and your release disaster instead becomes a release party. They'll probably even spring for the pizza.