Hunted by a Freak
Professionally speaking, some find satisfaction in leading, in managing or in burying themselves in pure technical things. Some others with a more twisted mind—like yours truly—find strange satisfaction searching, hunting and taking care of project freaks. This means, things that no one wants to take care of and everyone ignores, often on purpose, locking them in the attic. Put in a different way, things that most find too unappealing, tedious or irrelevant to get near them.
Every project has its darlings. The popular things, the things that capture most of the attention and the spotlight, the discussions, the heated arguments. Zooming out, it feels like projects progress thanks to those flashy, highly visible work celebrities. I beg to differ. I do believe projects progress thanks to the movement of the small, the forgotten, unglamorous, neglected stuff. It’s been said: devil is in the details.
What are those devilish details in technical projects, anyway? Those are, for example, things that fall between the cracks. The silent victims of hierarchical work. Things that camp in nefarious “no man lands” that projects love to create. We’ve heard too many times the question bouncing randomly around like a deflating balloon: who does this? Is it you or me? It’s usually nobody. But they can be things that do make sense, that have clear owners, but still slip into oblivion because there is a lack of enforcement—no one is checking if they are being done or not—or there are more fun things to do. Mind you, the project freaks eventually come to the surface for oxygen —like orcas do—at later stages of development, to the sheer realization of puzzled engineers who ask themselves, incredulous: “how didn’t we see this being unattended for such a long time?”.
“None so blind as those who will not see.”
I love project’s freaks. For they give me the great feeling I am slowly adding order to disorder. I love the idea of people in the future finding out in awe that the thing they thought had rusted in a corner for years is nicely managed and kept up to date by a mysterious elf. And enjoy more if I can avoid taking any credit, helping to spread the rumor that a ghostly bureaucrat with a humpback is roaming the office at night lowering entropy.
A veteran engineer once told me that Systems Engineering is about filling gaps. To me, it feels like Systems Engineering is about loving to run the project freak show.