Managing creative processes

Found an interesting article by Steven A. Lowe, Project management: A surefire way to kill your software product, which discusses management practices applied to software development. Although Lowe’s focus is software, the discussion can easily be applied to management processes in any creative industry. Much of the narrative will be familiar to anyone who has tried to be creative in a heavily managed context. Lowe’s key argument is that the usual metrics of good management – predictability and efficiency – are not at all appropriate when applied to the management of creative processes. Instead what is needed is flexibility to support the continuous learning that takes place in a creative process.