Software Organization Anti-Patterns
Time for another round-up of anti-patterns, this time focusing on software organization anti-patterns. As much as developers may want to focus on writing code, it’s not uncommon to have to wade through an organization’s own re-enactment of Game of Thrones. It’s useful to have an awareness of common fallacies, political games, and groupthink to better navigate an organization. And I would encourage managers to identify these anti-patterns early and snuff them out so that the true objectives of the organization can get the attention that they need.
Christoph Nissle has a great write-up on twelve software organization anti-patterns in his post here:
- Body Ballooning
- Empire Building
- Warm Body
- Single Head of Knowledge
- Mushroom Management
- Yet Another Meeting Will Solve It
- Net Negative Producing Programmer
- Management By Numbers
- Fear of Success
- Faux System Architects
- Crocodile Management
- Programmer Interrupt
Software organizations can also be impacted by general organizational anti-patterns that would affect any organization. Noah Brier has a summary of seven of these types of patterns here:
- Anlaysis Paralysis
- Bicycle Shed
- Cash Cow
- Design by Committee
- Peter Principle
- Seagull Management
- Stovepipe or Silos
David Tanzer covers a list of nine anti-patterns common to agile organizations in his book, Quick Glance At: Agile Anti-Patterns. Jose M. Beas has a summary of these in his three-part series here, here, and here:
- Agile Theater
- Feature Factory
- Product Backlog Bankruptcy
- Team Backlog
- Architecture Breakdown
- Burnout by 1000 Baby Steps
- Collaboration Friction
- Tailoring Agile
- Because They Said So
Are there any organization anti-patterns you would add to the list?