Software Project Management at Google

Recently I ran across a good article on project management. See if the author’s description of typical project management sounds familiar:

Hire a bunch of engineers, then hire more.
Dream up a project.
Set a date for when they want it launched.
Put some engineers on it.
Whip them until they’re either dead or it’s launched. Or both.
Throw a cheap, pathetic little party, maybe. This step is optional.
Then start over.

Ring a bell? Ring a bunch of bells? Probably. Now look at some of the ways Google handles software development:

There are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads.
Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.
Developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it’s not their main project.
There aren’t very many meetings.
It’s quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5.
There aren’t Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I’ve ever seen.
Even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, and they don’t work insane hours unless they want to.

A seasoned project manager would probably ask How can they get anything done (with the unsaid addendum at the end, without cracking the whip?). Incentives is the answer. Projects deemed more important to Google get higher incentives for the developers. Projects that weren’t viewed as important but later turn out to be important are given incentives post-launch. Periodically everybody gets together to view the projects that were launched, they show a picture of the people that worked on the project, and everybody claps. Launching high priority projects is a natural product of Google’s project management strategy and corporate culture. And they do it extremely well.

It’s a pretty interesting - though quite lengthy - article, which you can find here (note that the author does swear with some proficiency, so if you’re sensitive to such things, use your best judgment before deciding to read it).