Management By Walking Around

Coined by David Packard and Bill Hewlett See:

The HP Way Edited by David Packard

ISBN 0887307477 Usually referred to by the acronym MBWA.

Often referred to as Management by Wandering Aimlessly by those being managed.

Actually a valuable and useful practice. The concept is that in most interpersonal work situations, most of the time you only see what the other person is presenting. Since they know your expectations, they will manage their presentation so as to satisfy you. On the other hand, when you walk around you get to witness what people are actually doing.

Another way to accomplish this is to seat the managers in the same cube farm as the workers, right smack dab in the middle.

Not a bad idea most of the time, but a right pain when either you want to have "a word" with one of the team, or they want a word with you. Wandering off to an office/meeting room is a bit obvious, and seems to make the conversation a bit more "official" than is sometimes appropriate.

Definitely better than ManagementByPhone?, ManagementByEmail or ManagementByMemo?.

However, it does take more than just walking around and watching. When a manager sticks a head into a developer's cubicle and asks "How is it going?", the conversation tends to not be very valuable. And if it is done too often, developers may try to look busy all the time, fearful that if they are caught sitting there and thinking, they'll get into trouble. Many developers want to be judged solely on the results of their work, and don't like it when someone watches how the work gets done.

2003-12-24 PhilStubbington