Classic mistakes (part I)

Having recently been reminded of the classic mistakes in software development I decided to see how well they apply to parenting. As this covers a large area I’ll split the posting in three parts covering 12 points each. So here we go:

1. Undermined motivation

   Your parents will (without fail) tell you (in excruciating detail) exactly what you are doing wrong. On rare occasions you'll do something right just to be reminded of the many times you did it wrong.

2. Weak personnel

   Uhm… I should skip this one.

3. Uncontrolled problem employees

   See 2.

4. Heroics

   In this field you’ll need heroism. Especially at 3am while forming the words: “Honey, I think it’s your turn now.”

5. Adding people to a late project

   Grandparents, friends, babysitters, friendly neighbors will add new behavioral patterns to your baby (they will not correct or improve them).

6. Noisy, crowded offices

   The emphasis is on noisy.

7. Friction between developers and customers

   Your baby may feel you are not cooperating and not meeting his/her needs. You may feel your baby is being unreasonable. This leads and is partially caused by poor communication.

8. Unrealistic expectations

   You may expect to do a good job – give your offspring a happy childhood and all. Fifteen years from now, you’ll get a chance to explain it all to their psychiatrist.

9. Lack of effective project sponsorship

   There are no sponsors in this business. There are however family members eager to fill the role.

10. Lack of stakeholder buy-in

    See 9.

11. Lack of user input

    You need to read this one as lack of meaningful user input. There’s plenty of meaningless user output (also see 6.)

12. Politics placed over substance

    You’ll receive unbelievable amount of hints, suggestions to follow and vehement criticism for not following some latest parenting model (apparently - Indigo parenting has been renamed Fundamental Communication Parenting).

There’s nothing like taking a word most unrelated to children and stick parenting at the end. I recommend making-up your own parenting model to counter such advice. Lately I’ve had some luck using (well Agile and Asynchronous parenting were already taken!) Ajax parenting. The idea behind Ajax parenting… well it deserves a separate posting. Keep an eye on your rss reader for the next 12 points though.