Management by Wishful Thinking Is More Common than You'd (Wish to) Think - ' Ignorance is the mother '

Ignorance is the Mother of Admiration

There's a different weakness that can look like MBWT, but is both more damaging when unrestrained and easier to ameliorate: brute ignorance.

This ignorance happens when people without formal IT training, usually from finance or computer science backgrounds, end up in control of big software projects.

The academic trendies who invented and proliferated the "real time" organization and the "more with less" cult, because they never actually ran an organization that produced anything tangible, just don't let real tendencies or experience get in the way of their ideologies.

Ignorance is not, in itself, a bad thing. The ignorant person can observe and see things the experienced take for granted.

The ignorant person is free to ask questions with a free pass.

But ignorance that's not seeking to learn for whatever reason is toxic. This was pandemic in the '90s and, ironically, even in the contraction, holds a lot of sway.

My favorite example was an entrepreneur, a really interesting English lit major who was using venture funding for his startup.

He was describing the super-fast development cycles he was holding his team to.

I asked him about testing, and he said (I love this), "Sometimes you just have to build the airplane while you're flying it."

Fatal thinking that is bald-faced obvious. This analogy doesn't "fly".

In real life, you can't fly an un-built airplane.

The analogy was as predestined to crash and burn as the business model he was trying to support.

Ignorance is not stupidity. Smart people do this, too.

Mensa, the elite membership group for people who are in the top 2 percent for smarts as measured by IQ tests, had an implementation that crashed and burned because instead of running in parallel, the group cut over quickly from a working one to a new one during a holiday weekend.

They Live. We Sleep.

There are plenty of ways to cut time and costs out of big projects.

Pimping quality, however, has a very poor track record of success.

That doesn't mean it's going to stop. The Permafrost Economy, with thin margins going anorexic and investors seeking increased returns, puts pressure on executives and managers to find places to cut.

The ignorant think they can get away with it because they don't know any better.

The MBWT types are the good soldiers, and are less likely to make waves, ergo more likely to stick around.

That means it's more likely over time that projects will display the results of this behavior.

The solution is to defend your spec—for development and QA despite budget cuts and pressure from cost-sensitive integrators.

In addition, be prepared in advance for the wishful thinkers to do their thing, so you can negotiate a compromise, yielding on details you can live without to get assurance you'll get testing and quality control.

And never let anyone talk you out of running in parallel for at least a few months (and at least close out a month after a full fiscal quarter if the application has any finance features).

You have to manage the Brutishly Ignorant and the MBWT dingbats kindly but firmly because the consequences are expensive.

You can slap those plane-parts in place as fast as you want, but if you're counting on fairy dust to get you airborne and keep you up there, you're building your project's coffin, not the airplane.