“Why doesn’t my manager listen when I explain the details?”
“Why doesn’t the developer just give me what I ask for?”

If you’ve ever heard these complaints—or made them–you’re not alone. Questions like these are a symptom of a communication disconnect.

Managers get a bad rap when conversation turns to context switching. Johanna Rothman indicates they may have forgotten what development is like. Tom DeMarco in Why Does Software Cost So Much (If We Did Only One Thing to Improve …) states “I’ve come to believe that fragmentation is due mostly to managerial sloppiness.” (pg 90). How do the environment and corporate culture impact managerial decisions? In what context does development context switching make sense? Here are three situations that make sense to me. (And I’m

I met George Dinwiddie so long ago, CompuServe ruled the online world. We participated in the Software Development Forum. He recently added to the context switching discussion.

I usually have 3 or more things going on at any time. Right now I’m doing exploratory work for one client (lots of try this, try that, well, how about trying something else?), upgrading a system for another client (I’ve already done three of their systems), and preparing for a class.

Today I had the opportunity to remember that “context is everything”. Hurricane Frances continues her slow crawl up the eastern United States. It started raining here in North Carolina yesterday (Tuesday 2004.09.07). This morning my radio crackled with reports of accidents and emergencies. Fortunately, none were in our response area. Then the pager tones sounded. “Squad 86 respond with the local VFD to a one car roll over. One adult and two children confirmed entrapped.” I arrived just before the rescue truck. The SUV lay