Monday, December 29, 2008

Flip The Bozo Bit

The Term comes from Jim McCarthy’s book Dynamics of software development: Don’t flip the Bozo bits and more rules for delivering great software on time.

Problem. There is an idiot in your organization who drive and wastes everyone’s time.
Context. You are working on a project; one person makes unreasonable demands and pushes the wrong things all the times. One who never contributes anything remotely intelligent.
Forces:
* The work needs to get done.
* You can't fire the guy.

Anti pattern (possibly a wrong solution): Set the guy’s "Bozo bit" to TRUE. This means that, in your mind, everything he says and does can be safely ignored.

In some situations this technique can be used to filter out noise from your life. However ignoring the root cause for too long can lead to disaster.

How many of these guys do you have around?

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