I view this post as being a rant against this particular shop with potentially subpar management practices which is frustrating, and I sympathesize.<p>However, if you intend this as an argument against general software project management, I must disagree.
(See: "He introduced us to ‘Jira’, a word that strikes fear into the soul of a developer.")<p>Lately I've had the opportunity to work at a place with very forward-thinking, progressive, and helpful PMs and generally good organizational structure.<p>I like our approach and here is why:<p>* We are not afraid to change things. This might lead to some temporary disagreements between technical leads and PMS, but EVERYONE in the team has transparency into the process, and an opportunity to voice an opinion.<p>* We taking scoring tickets very seriously. I've been at places where everyone on a team might vote on a ticket, even if they cannot appreciate the true scope of it. Here it's different. For instance, we have seen that in the last couple of weeks, our velocity was unusually high. This might indicate we are scoring tickets too highly, and from what I've seen of my own work, I'm inclined to agree.<p>I've had a length interview with a PM who spent some time afterwards telling me about his metholodogies (I gladly listened.) When given the choice between Gantt charts which have cliffs (indicating poor future planning and rushing to get things done last minute) and nice step-ladder charts, we see why PMs prefer things the way they do.<p>Sometimes it gets in the way of just writing code sure. But with good organizational structure, especially in a mid-size company that has upcoming deadlines and business features to ship, we identify priorities quickly while still being aware of things like reducing code debt.