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None of it works because Waterfall and most forms of Agile both assume closed allocation, which is a bad assumption that wrecks everything. Closed allocation dooms you to prevailing mediocrity and process can only make that worse.

Most management and process exists to turn 1.0x developers into 1.2x (in theory) but turns the 10x into 3x or 2x or sometimes -2x. When you start enforcing process, closing up definitions of work, and take power away from engineers, you lose so much more off the top than you get from bringing up the bottom.

The problem is that very few executives actually want to create an inspiring place to work where people do their best. ("Fuck you, I've got mine.") They want incremental "improvements" (of questionable long-term value) on what already exists. This hand-wringing about process sounds a lot like early communism: it trudges along happily, inventing new structures, in complete ignorance of the human motivations around it.




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