Right, so about this Terry Sanger thing. It wasn’t exactly a tool or some fancy method, at least not for me. It takes me back to a job I had quite a few years ago, maybe around 2012, 2013? We were working on this internal system, nothing too glamorous, mostly for tracking inventory and stuff.
Anyway, Terry Sanger was the guy brought in to oversee the final phase. He wasn’t really a tech guy, more like a management consultant type. Upper management loved him, thought he had all the answers. We, the folks actually building the thing, were less convinced.
First Impressions and The Process
My first real interaction? He called this big meeting. Pulled everyone in – developers, testers, even the documentation person. He had these huge printed charts, really old-school stuff. He started talking about ‘synergy’ and ‘workflow optimization’. Honestly, a lot of it went over my head, seemed like buzzwords.
What really got tricky was his process. He insisted on these daily ‘alignment sessions’. Sounded fine, right? But they weren’t stand-ups. They were like, hour-long meetings where he’d go around the room and ask each person to justify their work from the previous day against his charts. It totally killed momentum.
- We’d spend the first hour, sometimes more, just talking about work instead of doing it.
- He’d question tiny details, stuff that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme.
- If something wasn’t on his chart, he’d get really worked up.
I remember trying to explain a technical hurdle we hit. Took me ages because he kept interrupting, asking how it fit into ‘Quadrant B’ of his ‘Master Plan’. It was frustrating. We were just trying to fix a bug, you know?
The Outcome
The project got finished, eventually. Way over schedule, of course. And the final product wasn’t much different from what we’d planned originally, before Terry showed up with his charts. But management seemed happy because Terry told them it was a success according to his metrics.
For me, it was a lesson learned. Sometimes, you just gotta navigate the personalities and the weird processes people bring in. You do your work, try to steer things gently when you can, and document everything. It also made me realize I preferred environments with less… let’s call it ‘performative management’.
I didn’t stay at that place much longer after that project wrapped up. Wasn’t entirely because of Terry, but that whole experience was definitely a factor. It just felt like we were spending more energy managing the manager than building the software. Not really my cup of tea.