Extreme Enthusiasm

I was at Better Software in Florence last week, where I heard my friend Alberto Brandolini talk with his usual flair about how problems within organizations relate to problems in the IT departments of organizations. I agree with most of what Brando said, except for a couple of things.

You can hear it from just about every cool lean and agile speaker these days. It’s the idea that hierarchical control is evil. For these speakers, the company organizational chart is the symbol of everything that’s going wrong in the enterprise. Cool modern speakers about “agile management” propose alternative models based on non-hierarchical, ad hoc, informal communication structures. As far as I understand management, these alternative organization models are deeply flawed.
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