They manage from the bottom up, not the top down. Sales will sell to a bunch of customers (which will include a bunch of features) however there is no connection between that and what the development team is going to produce. The development team also keeps their list of features "secret" often until days before release because frankly, they just don't know if they will make it or not. If they do make it, because of the lateness of the internal announcement, they are then scrambling to figure out how to configure and train internal resources, prior to deployment into production.
There is no accountability from upper management on middle management consistently missing dates - middle management are all part of the buddy system. The developers are all working so hard but most of them are not getting rewarded properly (again unless they are part of the buddy system). The customers are definitely at risk unless all their features happen to make developments feature list. It would have to happen by pure luck not by any type of planning on the part of the development organization. The development management team is all run remotely out of Texas - They fly back and forth weekly. There is no office down there. In fact, a great deal of the executives work remotely and get housed in condo's here in Mpls so they can fly in and out as they see fit. They waste a lot of company money.
Their new building was already overflowing less than a year after they moved in. You can reach over and touch the person you sit next to. The working environment is poor at best. It is loud, there is nothing but a glass barrier between development and the lunch room. They have a deck which lets in cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer making the temperature of the space almost unbearable. It was just poor planning and a poor layout. They tried to sell it as modern layout to encourage collaboration, etc. but in reality, I think they were just trying to save money.
