Over-managed, under-resolved

Things fall apart. Plans go sideways.

When a software project starts to struggle—slipping deadlines, slow performance, mysterious bugs—the natural instinct is to add management. More meetings. More status updates. More reports.

On a recent project, performance tanked. The app slowed to a crawl. A dozen status meetings were held. Several reporting formats were invented. People talked about moving off Rails.

Turned out? It was a change in their network hardware. Nothing to do with the code at all.

All that management time? A detour.

Now, I’m not anti-management. The right amount of it clears roadblocks and keeps teams aligned. But too much of it—especially when applied reactively—can actually make things worse. It takes time away from debugging, testing, and fixing the actual problem.

If your project is in trouble, consider this: are you spending time solving the problem, or talking about solving the problem?

Management is a tool. Don’t swing it like a hammer when what you need is a flashlight.