On Stupidity (and Web Development Project Management)

I was thinking about stupidity. What is stupidity? One way of looking at it is that it's when a model is being over-used, despite lots of evidence that the model might be inadequate to the task.

Here's an example. Say you arrived in France the first time – perhaps out of the channel tunnel and for some reason no one in your whole life had mentioned to you that they drive on the right-hand side of the road. You might be fine driving on the left-hand side of the road – for a while. When you meet the first car coming toward you on the "wrong" side of the road you might think "What an idiot!" But by the time you get to the third or fourth avoidance of a head-on collision, if you've survived that long, you might be ready to question your model of what's going on. If you weren't, then I think it would be perfectly OK to say that YOU were really stupid.

Stupid huh? Who lives for free with all the Whiskas they can eat? (photo courtesy Barbour)

This is very relevant to web development, since so many of my clients, who develop websites for a living, are so anxious to tell me that their clients are really stupid. Just stop for a minute and ask yourself.

"Who's really stupid here?"

Really? If you've had the equivalent of five or six, or twenty or thirty "head-on" collisions with clients, who is it who needs to change their model?

Building the Lean Web Development Team, helps you look at managing web development in a totally different way. Book now for the course on 20th January 2010.

For further information, contact mark.stringer@gmail.com (07736 807 604)