6 Comments

Have you looked into registered reports? That approach would seem to address many of your points about getting formal feedback earlier, before a study is carried out.

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Project Management Theatre has been an absolute curse on software engineering for the past 20 years, please, let’s not have science befall the same fate. What you’re suggesting really boils down to a corporatisation, a further encroachment by the bean counters, those who must always calculate the loads and the capacities and the deadlines and take twice as long at three times the cost just in planning before anything actually gets done. Again, please, no!

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Totally get this concern! Though I wouldn't quite put it the same way as you do, I'm also really concerned about the over-professionalization of science—making science more about promotion within artificial disciplinary bounds, rather than the search for knowledge. However, I think you're dramatically underestimating the distance between here and there: between "project management theatre" as practiced in software engineering and the most basic argument I'm making, which is that grad students get little to no external feedback about whether anyone in their field will care about their work until that work is actually completed.

P.S., do you have any good books/articles recs detailing how the Lean Startup methodology has gone wrong over the past two decades? Would be really curious to explore that further.

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Okay, yes I understand the distinction you make there. As far as an gaining an insight into what's wrong with software project management over the past 20 years, a search for "what's wrong with agile" will bear endless fruit.

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Haha okay! I look forward to digging into this.

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