As a dev working with non-techie PMs I somewhat agree. I agree there should be a basic knowledge of how software development works but I don't think teaching them to program is the solution.
What if we pair a PM with a dev (even a junior) for an hour or two of "let me teach you what happens from when I type this stuff to when you tell me it's broken :D" ?
What if instead we teach devs to be better at communicating?
This way we strengthen team bonds instead of siloing PMs in a room to learn programming by themselves. Is it really important they learn what a for loop is? I don't think so.
Maybe it's better to "pair" with a dev and see how the software they help make goes from the requirements to the customer and talk about the pain points and what can be done to make that loop more efficient.
Yes it does, but maybe we can go to a middle ground. What about publications well written like increment.com/ ? Most articles are not uber technical and there's lot in there that talks about the life of a programmer, such the issue about Development or the one about being on-call.
As a dev working with non-techie PMs I somewhat agree. I agree there should be a basic knowledge of how software development works but I don't think teaching them to program is the solution.
What if we pair a PM with a dev (even a junior) for an hour or two of "let me teach you what happens from when I type this stuff to when you tell me it's broken :D" ?
What if instead we teach devs to be better at communicating?
This way we strengthen team bonds instead of siloing PMs in a room to learn programming by themselves. Is it really important they learn what a for loop is? I don't think so.
Maybe it's better to "pair" with a dev and see how the software they help make goes from the requirements to the customer and talk about the pain points and what can be done to make that loop more efficient.
Sure, communication is very important and a part of it resides in not slapping walls in the face of project managers.
I just feel that there is a level of literacy that would help project managers reading what happens and understand more faster. Does that make sense?
Yes it does, but maybe we can go to a middle ground. What about publications well written like increment.com/ ? Most articles are not uber technical and there's lot in there that talks about the life of a programmer, such the issue about Development or the one about being on-call.
The article What happens when the pager goes off?: A survey of incident response across the tech industry seems like a really good place to start to have a conversation in a team about what it means to be a developer.