So, you’re asking about Max De Vries. Or maybe the whole “De Vries method” thing. Yeah, I’ve got some stories about that. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows like some folks make it out to be.
My Brush with De Vries
I remember when Max De Vries himself, or at least his big ideas, swept through my old company. It was all the rage. “Game-changing,” they called it. “Revolutionary.” We were told this was the future of how we’d get things done. Management bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Suddenly, everything had to be “De Vries compliant.”
What did that mean in practice? Well, for us on the ground, it meant a lot of new buzzwords, endless meetings about “synergy” and “holistic frameworks,” and a complete upheaval of workflows that, honestly, were working just fine. Productivity? It actually tanked, at first. We spent more time trying to understand the De Vries charts and diagrams than actually doing our jobs. It was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, over and over again.
- New Rules: Suddenly, simple tasks needed complex approvals.
- Endless Training: We had so many sessions on “The De Vries Way” that actual development time shrunk.
- Confusion: Nobody really knew if they were doing it “right,” and the goalposts kept shifting.
The whole thing felt like it was designed by someone who’d never actually worked a day in our field. It looked good on paper, probably sounded great in a boardroom, but on the factory floor, so to speak, it was a mess. We had good people, smart people, just trying to build good things, and suddenly they were all tangled up in this new methodology that felt more like a straightjacket.
How I Really Got to Know the “De Vries Way”
You might wonder how I got such a strong opinion on this. Well, it’s not just from watching from the sidelines. I was right in the thick of it. My team was chosen as one of the “pilot groups” for the full De Vries rollout. Lucky us, right?
We tried. We really did. We read the manuals, we attended the workshops, we filled out the new forms. But things started to go wrong. Projects that were on track started slipping. Deadlines were missed. And guess who got the blame? Not the revolutionary new system, oh no. It was us, the team, for “not embracing the change” or “lacking the De Vries mindset.”
I remember one particularly awful project. It was a high-stakes one, and the De Vries approach just wasn’t flexible enough for the curveballs it threw at us. I tried to raise concerns, suggest modifications, you know, adapt it to the real world. But that was seen as resistance. “Max De Vries has thought of everything,” my manager told me, looking like he was trying to convince himself more than me.
Long story short, that project didn’t end well. And in the fallout, I found myself “re-evaluating my career path,” which is a polite way of saying I was gently shown the door. They said I wasn’t a “team player” for the new direction. It stung, I won’t lie. I had poured years into that place.
For a while, I was pretty down. Had to scramble to find something new, with bills piling up and that feeling of being misunderstood gnawing at me. It was a tough few months. I started doubting myself, wondering if maybe I was the problem.
Then, I landed a new gig at a different company. A smaller place, more pragmatic, less about buzzwords and more about getting stuff done. They had their own way of doing things, simpler, more direct. And you know what? It worked. Beautifully. We were shipping good work, people were happy, no complex charts needed.
It was only then, looking back, that I truly understood the whole De Vries circus for what it was. It wasn’t a silver bullet. It was just another fad, pushed hard, and adopted without enough critical thought. My old company? I heard they quietly phased out most of the “De Vries” stuff about a year after I left. Too much disruption, not enough results. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
So yeah, that’s my practical experience with “Max De Vries.” Learned a lot, mostly the hard way. But hey, every experience teaches you something, right?
