It makes an interesting point about focusing on quality instead of a check mark by someone who is not directly under the hood. (project manager in this case) Also it cautions against seeing the trees (p1 bug) and missing the forest (good software).
I do think project managers are needed for this large scale software though. So I'm wondering, what is the best way a project manager should manage development of Apple's software?
My current project is run in a similar fashion; and it shows... code quality is terrible, technologies are stale and riddled with performance work-arounds, bugs are fixed with the fastest possible implementation and handed off to the testing team then consequently bounced back and forth with trivial disputes.
The worst thing is the manager/ product owner/ tyrannical architect is a actually a nice bloke. but he is absolutely terrible at insulating devs from his stressors, which has a massive knock-on effect on his team. Recently he took leave for around 4 weeks and it was like night and day! we self organised: minimised new features and maximise time spent addressing technical debt built-up over 2 years. I was enjoying work again, and it had a almost skunkwork-like feel to it.
I'm not contesting the article, but I'd feel more comfortable taking it as useful information if the source were something other than a Reddit comment.
Thing is, any of us who've been in the software industry for very long have probably seen places run like this and that it is not the best way to get quality software out of the door in a reliable fashion.
I was wondering if this was somewhat related to Apple trying to find a future direction because lately they've been just adding new versions of phones or macs or adding new updates to them but have not introduced anything except for maybe apple watch 2 years ago which has been steadily growing but not the immediate hit or newly introduced like Amazon echo or Google Home for right now.
Maybe this prioritization of a lot of new features is them making up for introducing a new product direction?
EDIT: oops, found Apple Homepod, maybe they're not marketing it well? Anyone here that uses it? My friends are apple lovers, buying nee iphones and macbook pro and havent heard of it either.
I think you raise a good point; I don't believe the HomePod even merits your "oops". It's not being heavily marketed because it's not all that impressive.
It is definitely the best speaker around, multiple reviews say the sound quality is amazing. However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on HomePod is a joke when compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple's culture of secrecy has left them woefully behind in the AI race (where researchers love to publish).
I agree with you that Apple does not really know where to go next. Awesome AR glasses that actually sell and do amazing things? An amazing smart home assistant that can run your home, but is handleable with simple within the Apple eco-system? I don't think Apple has done anything that bold in recent years and will struggle like you say.
Unless Apple secretly is doing something truly "Wow" and they're just quiet about it. Otherwise, I believe Tim Cook will earn more and more comparisons to Steve Ballmer: Great for sales/stock price, missed out on a game changing era of technology.
> However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on HomePod is a joke when compared to
This has nothing to do with secrecy or lack of user data or lack of algorithms knowledge. What is missing in Siri is lack of high quality gold data sets -- this is often curated by hoards of phds and other domain experts. It takes time to do the curation and Google is ahead of the pack. Amazon has done a great job opening up the eco system to third parties.
Apple's strength is its limited product lineup, and iteration on those devices.
Even dating back 10 years, there's really only Macs, iPods, iPhones. Now Watches. Smaller stuff was also always around (Airport, Time Machine, TV, now Homepod)
There is also a big difference in how these new devices interact -- they talk to each other in non trivial ways (e.g. watch <--> iphone). Now instead of QAing O(n) feature, you need to QA O(n^2) feature interactions. This is hard to scale and maintain
This can be managed by getting the software engineer's input into whether something really is a P0 or P1. The Product Managers should also know their users better so they can chime in and not consider everything to be a fire.
Mature projects are also supposed to have an increasing percentage of the time spent on them dedicated towards maintenance / upgrades / fixes / upkeep. A PMO that can't convince upper management of this is a weak PMO.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadI do think project managers are needed for this large scale software though. So I'm wondering, what is the best way a project manager should manage development of Apple's software?
The worst thing is the manager/ product owner/ tyrannical architect is a actually a nice bloke. but he is absolutely terrible at insulating devs from his stressors, which has a massive knock-on effect on his team. Recently he took leave for around 4 weeks and it was like night and day! we self organised: minimised new features and maximise time spent addressing technical debt built-up over 2 years. I was enjoying work again, and it had a almost skunkwork-like feel to it.
then he returned, then i handed in my notice.
And yet it still happens.
(insert image of me banging my head on the desk)
Maybe this prioritization of a lot of new features is them making up for introducing a new product direction?
EDIT: oops, found Apple Homepod, maybe they're not marketing it well? Anyone here that uses it? My friends are apple lovers, buying nee iphones and macbook pro and havent heard of it either.
It is definitely the best speaker around, multiple reviews say the sound quality is amazing. However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on HomePod is a joke when compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple's culture of secrecy has left them woefully behind in the AI race (where researchers love to publish).
I agree with you that Apple does not really know where to go next. Awesome AR glasses that actually sell and do amazing things? An amazing smart home assistant that can run your home, but is handleable with simple within the Apple eco-system? I don't think Apple has done anything that bold in recent years and will struggle like you say.
Unless Apple secretly is doing something truly "Wow" and they're just quiet about it. Otherwise, I believe Tim Cook will earn more and more comparisons to Steve Ballmer: Great for sales/stock price, missed out on a game changing era of technology.
This has nothing to do with secrecy or lack of user data or lack of algorithms knowledge. What is missing in Siri is lack of high quality gold data sets -- this is often curated by hoards of phds and other domain experts. It takes time to do the curation and Google is ahead of the pack. Amazon has done a great job opening up the eco system to third parties.
Mature projects are also supposed to have an increasing percentage of the time spent on them dedicated towards maintenance / upgrades / fixes / upkeep. A PMO that can't convince upper management of this is a weak PMO.