Never let just anybody be in charge

Never simply let anybody be in charge of your critical projects or products. Its a disaster ready to happen. If the person happens to be an X-Men, be prepared for bankruptcy! A fine example would be a J2EE product that the company I work for is trying sell.

The product started out as individual solutions to specific customers need. The management then realized that these individual solutions can be reused in myriads of projects, and so the product was born. They put this person (let's call him Dumbass) in charge of this new product's direction and implementation. FYI, Dumbass is not an X-Men but is no better. Dumbass has zero hands on experience in J2EE or even Java, just general knowledge. Worst of all Dumbass is a proud close minded stubborn SOB!

Since the product is actually a bundling of the various solutions developed over the years, the technology employed varies from BMP to CMP. The codes are also polluted by the X-Men. Instead of doing various refactoring to the code base to standardize the various techniques used and to better integrate the various solutions, Dumbass chose to concentrate on esoteric stuff.

Dumbass also came out with the idea of simplifying the API, which to be fair is a good idea, but the implementation is a joke. Instead of simplifying the existing API, another layer of remote Session Facade with the new API was bolted on, delegating calls to the existing API. Now, we all know how evil is a remote method call and a chatty application making lots of remote call is a big no no.

Dumbass was in charge of this product for a year and it is fubar. The product is slow, buggy and hard to maintain. Does your company have a Dumbass in charge of its critical products?