It doesn't, don't think Chip was saying that
I certainly wasn't.
I've worked with a lot of PMs as a developer. I know how my role impacts on theirs.
You've worked with a lot of programmers, you know how your role impacts on theirs.
That's the difference between us and someone just starting out.
All that stuff that's often at best just alluded to in class.
My classes in software development 90% of it was on the arcana on software design, literally years of it. No context around it. Software life cycles and development management, two paragraphs.
From the point of view of a commercial developer who's worked on a lot of projects with a lot of PMs and BAs, I've got to say there was a fundamental failure to teach me what was important.
When to sort something quickly, and when to quickly sort something.
I wouldn't expect a PM to know how efficient a bubble sort is or to come up with the algorithm. I would expect them to know that a super fast sort was far less important to the project, than getting the customer list form finished so we can get on with the order form.
An experienced developer would come and tell you that with a bubble sort you can have the form tomorrow, if you want it to come up in x clock cycles it's going to be next month.
An experienced PM would know that his developer was spending all their time trying to shave three nano-seconds off his sort algorithm, and hadn't actually created the form that was going to use it.
This is what real world experience gives us, there is "no other way round" we are both part of an integrated solution to the customers problem.
If you believe "you" are the most important cog in the machine, then other cogs will be deemed less important.
The risks they identify, the concerns they put forward, the needs they have in order to work efficiently or even at all will be denigrated, ignored. "Your" bit is more important.
Wheels complete off, failed, often comes as a complete surprise to the incompetent.
Or the worse situation, the programmer who gives knowingly you a super fast sort on a broken form, or the PM who massages the numbers so the dashboard is all smiles.
