A memo to anyone reading
A memo to anyone reading this who's in management:
Some projects are risks, and sometimes projects need to be cancelled. It happens. That's life. But when the time comes when you need to cancel a project and throw out work that people have put months of their lives into, do them a favor and give them an explanation. It doesn't have to be an explanation that they'll agree with, but avoiding giving a reason at all makes the decision seem capricious and makes their work seem unimportant. Nobody appreciates being told that they're unimportant.
Better yet, if you made a mistake and let a project go almost all the way to completion before you kill it for reasons unrelated to how well it works, apologize. Show some remorse -- hopefully genuine, but if you can fake it well, that'll do just fine. That won't get the work that went into the project to matter, but it'll at least show that you understand that your employees put a lot of effort into their work, and that it's a shame for that effort to not result in something that ships.
Thanks.
John Gruber says, "NetNewsWire has
John Gruber
says, "NetNewsWire has all the makings of becoming a killer app. Is there a single Mac-oriented weblog that hasnât yet sung its praises?"
Well, whether this blog is Mac-oriented or not can be debated, but I'm afraid I have been lax in my responsibility to laud NNW as an incredibly terrific application. John's commentary is well worth reading -- I agree with everything he says about how NetNewsWire has changed the way I read the Web, and also changed the sites that I read. It's a great program that just keeps getting better and better. I can't wait to be able to pay for it.