Corporates - its like the material writes itself

For those of us stuck in the corporate world, only we can identify with the craziness of our daily jobs. Normal people just wont understand what it takes just to get simple things done. It's hard to explain how common sense and logic can be defied on a daily basis. But, we need to try, like therapy, even if it will just help us rationalise our existence in corporate. And maybe help us shake our head less in utter disbelief as the corporate circus does its rounds.

My last few posts have been inspired by recent encounters and frustrations at work. And it didn't really take much - this stuff really writes its self. Some guys at work often say "we need to write a book about this". But they never do (except for the Dilbert books) - we usually just content to send Dilbert's on groups containing management, hoping it will cause them to realise the silliness of how corporates work. But they never do.

So, with that in mind, I hope to write up a series of posts, that cover most of the corporate circus. Almost at the risk of, but hopefully not:

establishing this blog as a venue for potshots at the industry with little skin in the game.  Some of these screeds may inspire views, shares, or controversy, but without offering a lot in the way of actual, meaningful help.

Each will start with a relevant Dilbert (life imitating art?), and then hope to capture each one as a Law or Principal (and maybe some corollaries) like the Dilbert Principle or Parkinson's Law (this is a quick overview of some laws, and this is a must listen)

• Governance: "No meeting can go more than halfway with-out someone asking about Governance." Which really means: "how can we control this project and make sure it fails"
• Strategy: like the big G word above, "no project can be approved until someone asks for the strategy document"
• Procurement: "like a blind date, but worse"
• Hiring: "It may take 6 months to hire, but they never fire!". See this post on the Career Pendulum
• Culture: you can't buy or outsource culture
• Buzz words: agile, devops, digital transformation
• Time to value: "How to look busy and not get any work done"
• Outsourcing: "Its all about cost. We dont care about quality"
• Software development: See outsourcing and procurement above
• Software Architecture: "Bike-shedding - Parkinson's law of triviality". "Architects" discussing mundane issues, because they dont know how to code.
• Cloud: "No discussion on Cloud is complete with-out someone asking about security, Governance, or Strategy"
• People Engagement - smoke and mirrors
• Documentation - it does not exist if its not written in multiple documents
• Product Development - Building the product right, and building the right product