Herding Cats

For as long as anyone can remember, the term "herding cats" has been used as an analogy for the challenges involved in managing developers. The implication being, of course, that developers tend to be smart, wilful, single-minded folks. Personal experience suggests this is often the case.

The analogy was reflected in the title of a book named "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers who Lead Programmers", written by the impressively named J. Hank Rainwater. I mention it because this is a decent read for anyone who develops, or who works with developers - whether in a management capacity or not. It's not in the same league as "The Pragmatic Programmer", but I'm getting off the point now.

So anyway, I came across this video via Yahoo MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny's blog. It's so slickly made that you're not surprised when it turns out to be an ad for a big expensive professional services company. But I liked it.