It's interesting that this particular one seems to have generated the most reponse. When I wrote it, I had something pretty simple in mind. I didn't mean that projects should not be managed at all, but rather that most of the "project manager" people I've worked with are not very helpful. Nearly all of them were basically incapable of doing more than acting as glorified secretaries. They can't manage scope because they don't understand the work or the impact of changes and additions. They can't manage quality because they can only see and understand a small part of the system. (These are the people who are quick to e-mail you when an image is the wrong size, but have no idea when the entire application architecture stinks.) They can't manage risks because they don't know what's risky. They are handy for setting up meetings when the programmers and the cusotomers need to talk about these things, but that's about as far as it goes.

There have been a few significant exceptions to this rule over the years, and my heartfelt thanks go out to those people. If only there were more.

You brought up ideas about analysts and managers as well, but I won't get into that because I wasn't commenting on them in my statement.