How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects
Product Managers
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The Dictator A Product Manager that rejects any idea that did not come from them.
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The Sales Liaison A Product Manager who is only concerned with meeting the demands of the sales team, giving no thought to a holistic product vision.
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The Executive Assistant A Product Manager who only documents what the stakeholders have asked for, but denies access to the stakeholders, such that requirements cannot be negotiated.
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The Napkin Sketcher A Product Manager whose requirements are so vague that the development team must fill in the gaps, only to be told their decisions were incorrect.
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The Scope Wiggler A Product Manager who bypasses change control and impact analysis by presenting a big requirements change as a series of small changes distributed over time.
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The Patent Author A Product Manager who produces such a high volume of requirements documentation that it creates a barrier to adapting to change, as the documentation must be kept up to date.
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The Scope Creeper A Product Manager who increases the scope of a project while keeping the delivery date the same.
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The People Pleaser A Product Manager who believes their core job responsibility is to seek concessions and compromises between the development teams and stakeholders.
Designers
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The Note Taker A Designer who is relegated to doing nothing more than documenting the ideas of others.
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The Disenfranchised A Designer who feels they are powerless to influence the design of the project, and therefore are not providing design direction.
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The Professor A Designer so committed to the science and theory of user interface design, that they ignore the UI requirements coming from the stakeholders.
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The Artist A Designer who is more concerned with how the product looks and feels than if it does anything useful for the end user.
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The Distrusted A Designer who has lost all credibility with the project team, leading to their UI requirements being ignored as they are deemed to be not in the products’ best interest.
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The Blueprinter A Designer who specifies every detail of the UI to such a fine level of specification that there is no leeway for developers to choose alternative implementations that can reduce development time.
Project Managers
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The Meeting Scheduler A Project Manager who believes all project problems are caused through a lack of communication and coordination, and that copious amounts of meetings are the solution.
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The Statistician A Project Manager who is only concerned with establishing lists and checking items off, regardless of what those items are.
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The Delusional A Project Manager so out of touch with the realities of the project, that they are representing falsehoods to the stakeholders.
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The Pessimist A Project Manager that has concluded that the project will fail, cannot be convinced otherwise, and is vocal about their belief.
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The Optimist A Project Manager that has convinced themselves of project success regardless of evidence to the contrary.
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The Cheerleader A Project Manager who focuses on making sure everyone on the project is happy, rather than if the project will be successful.
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The Tyrant A Project Manager that treats project members with contempt in the name of motivating them to work harder.
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The Process Obsessed A Project Manager so obsessed with process, they forget their job is to help the project be successful.
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The Hoverer A Project Manager who believes that constantly asking for status keeps people focused on completing their tasks.
Development Managers
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The Formerly Technical A Development Manager who was a software Developer as some point in their past, leading them to believe their technical opinion in still relevant with today’s technology.
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The Non-Technical A Development Manager with no technical knowledge, and are therefore out of their depth when managing developers.
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The Ladder Climber A Development Manager with ambitions to advance their career, and sees their development team only as a means to do so.
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The Peacemaker A Development Manager who believes arguments are counterproductive, and therefore works to suppress debate of any kind.
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The Wants-to-be-Technical A Development Manager who wishes to return to the life of coding, after discovering that the life of a Development Manager is not for them.
Developers
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The Rockstar A Developer so talented, so productive, so essential that if they were to leave, the entire project would collapse.
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The Aspiring Manager A Developer who has decided that to escape the difficulties having to code, their career path should be one of management.
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The Bull in the China Shop A Developer so focused on getting the work done, that they completely forgo any notion of quality.
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The Diva A Developer so convinced of their irreplaceability that they adopt an attitude of arrogance that makes them impossible to manage.
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The Extreme Overestimator A Developer who has become so afraid of missing their deadlines that they ask for as much additional time as they can get away with.
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The Extreme Underestimator A Developer who consistently massively underestimates the amount of time needed to complete a task.
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The Hostage Taker A Developer who has written a piece of mission-critical software, and refuses to let any other Developer work on it so that they may remain indispensable.
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The Idealist A Developer is so obsessed with achieving architectural elegance and code perfection that they forget their job is to add business value.
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The Incompetent A Developer who lacks the intelligence or skill to do the job of writing software.
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The Soldier A Developer who does exactly what they are told without questions, regardless if it is the right thing to do.
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The Technology Enamored A Developer that is so excited to try new technologies that they will introduce them into the project regardless of if they are appropriate.
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The Legacy Maintainer A Developer whose only capability is the maintenance of legacy software, and therefore is incapable of taking on new work.
Quality Assurance
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The Firehose A QA who floods the developers with so many bug reports that they overwhelm the development team with a backlog of bugs they will never close.
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The Blamer A QA who accuses the developers of not testing their work whenever they find a bug.
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The Alarmist A QA who has declared that the entire product is of an unacceptable level of quality based only on their first impressions.
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The Scientist A QA who spends the majority of time documenting bugs, rather than finding new bugs.
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The Misleader A QA who often reports bugs inaccurately, leading the Developer down the wrong path as they attempt to reproduce and fix the problem.
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The Downtrodden A QA who has been beaten down by developers to the point that they hardly report any bugs for fear of Developer bullying.
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The Random Clicker A QA who looks for bugs by simply clicking on whatever they feel like.
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The Flippant A QA whose bug reports are so passive aggressive that developers interpret them as being rude.