Inspired by LawsOfUX and this tweet by @viktorcessan, a collection of Laws all managers should know. Some are focused on technology work, but some apply broadly. (As I continued to assemble the list, the categorization of it all is a bit sprawly, but, let's live a little).
- Brooks's Law - Adding people to a late software project makes it later.
- Lewin's Equation - B = f(P, E). An individual’s behavior (B) is a function (f) of the the person (P), including their history, personality and motivation, and their environment (E), which includes both their physical and social surroundings.
- Conway's Law - Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.
- Goodhart's Law - Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
- Hyrum's Law - With a sufficient number of users of an API all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.
- Gall's Law - A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
- McNamara Fallacy - The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
- Seven Deadly Diseases of Management - Lack of constancy of purpose; Emphasis on short-term profits; Annual performance reviews; Manager job hopping within an org; Relying solely on measurable metrics (“the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknownable”); Excessive medical costs; Excessive liability costs.
- deming.org - Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
- 85/15 Rule - So ... I can't actually trace this back to any reliable source...
- Psychological Safety - “Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.” -- Deming
- Usability Tests only need 5 Users
- Laws of Cooperation - A long list of laws assembled by @bartlog.
