Project methodologies are like sample code.

Joseph Cooney and I were talking over lunch today; being the geeks that we are (OK – I’m a geek, I’ll let Joseph plead guilty himself) the subjects discussed were quite varied, for example, the reason I chuckle when ever I tell anyone that I used to use WSAD (WebSphere Application Developer).

The reason is that internally I pronounce it “Wery SAD”. For some reason I visualise Mr. Chekov saying it. Anyway, thats not what I wanted to blog about. One of the subjects that we discussed was project management methodologies.

We both agreed that it is easy to get jaded about the whole project methodology discussion when I came out with the comment that “project methodologies are like sample code”.

Joseph commented that I seem to be always ready with some kind of pithy analogy. Honestly I think that when medical students pick apart my brain they’ll find that the neurons have aligned themselves into a pattern that looks suspiciously like a Dilbert comic strip – that and fork() is the most commonly called function in my brain – back onto the subject of project methodologies.

Project methodologies are like sample code because like sample code they outlines practices that look fantastic in the limited scenarios presented but once you try and use it in the wild you are suddenly confronted with complicating factors which make that practice unworkable.