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How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

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Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#211

Post by dstaley »

Yizahi wrote: post #135

I don't get Jira hate. It may be clunky, slow and overcomplicated but really it's just system to document stuff. If you don't document stuff on a sufficiently big project (I'd day >10 engineers, and especially at >100) then it's a recipe for a disaster. As for solutions to document stuff, specifically issues, then Jira seems to be ok and not lacking in any area, maybe not a leader but not a worst thing to use too.

> I don't get Jira hate. It may be clunky, slow and overcomplicated

Ding ding ding!

Seriously though, I think a lot of issues with Jira stem from poor implementations that cause it to perform terribly, which impedes an engineer's ability to quickly get in and out of Jira. For example, the on-prem Jira instance for one of my clients would take upwards of five minutes to render the board, and another 30+ seconds to render the ticket page. Adding comments was another frustrating experience. I'm sure the OOTB experience with modern Jira is probably fine, but it seems that hardly anyone uses Jira without some resource-intensive customization.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#212

Post by romanhn »

My sole experience in Big Tech consists of Facebook and the post more or less matches what I saw there. It seems to me, though, that the author views "no process" from a very positive lens, with no discussion of negatives. Like how at FB so many teams use spreadsheets to track their work (sometimes multiple spreadsheets per team, sometimes no tracking at all). There is some internal tooling, which is quite basic and at the time I was there it got deprecated without the replacement being finished yet. Whatever you say about JIRA, it can handle complex projects way better than a spreadsheet.

My biggest issue with the whole thing, however, boiled down to the set of incentives that centered around individual performance. You see, the teams weren't _teams_ per se, but a collection of individuals working on their own projects, sometimes related to those of other teammates, sometimes not. A team-oriented process like Scrum or Kanban cannot survive in an environment where every person is optimizing every decision for their advancement/bonus/whatever. There's some exaggeration here, but I definitely saw a lot of this at FB. Having come from a company with high-functioning Scrum and Kanban teams that worked together to achieve a common goal, I'd choose that any day, JIRA or not.

This is obviously a single example and many of the issues were Facebook-specific. But I bet there are other, not so positive, sides to the "no process" story at the rest of the companies.

Note I'm not claiming that the Agile processes are by definition good. I've seen plenty of bad implementations as well. At the end of the day, every group of humans is different and may require a different process (or no process at all) to maximize their success. What I'm suspicious of is the "every team picks their own process" claim, having seen company-set norms exerting enough force to make deviations from the common pattern rather painful and counter-cultural.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#213

Post by [deleted] »

erikwiffin wrote: post #157
jhugo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. It's probably not an accident that one of those numbers is half of 10 (and the number of fingers on one hand) – a common made-up number for everybody – and the other is 2^3 – a common made-up number for programmers.

I've always done planning poker with the Fibonacci sequence - 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. The idea being that the more complicated the task, the harder it is to estimate accurately.

[deleted]

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#214

Post by commandlinefan »

nickd2001 wrote: post #143
akudha wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with any system is that people try to enforce it, military style. In my previous job, we did scrum, but not too strict. We had two week cycles, not-too-strict deadlines (most of the time) etc. If I finished my task early, I was free to pick up tasks from the planned list, without having to get permission from my manager. We also didn't agonize over story points, retrospective etc. We did it light hearted…

" I realized that it all comes down to "metrics" - end of every sprint, my manager has to present it to his bosses". I wonder how widespread this is.. Certainly that's exactly what I experienced at a previous workplace, and worse than that, people's performance was judged on whether they'd done exactly the "right" stories in a 2 week sprint. Rather than thinking about developing software, people were working out how…

> whether they'd done exactly the "right" stories in a 2 week sprint

Not only that, but if anything else comes up during the "sprint", you're expected to address it while still finishing everything that you (involuntarily) "committed" to during sprint planning.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#215

Post by pc86 »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #70
sparsely wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be advocating the second workflow, i.e. pushing on a short lived branch then merging back in (their intermediate setup seems impractical technically for most setups - how do you run standard tests without committing your code, unless you do everything locally?)

You answered the question. You run as many tests as you can locally. Sometimes you can't, and the build goes red and you fix it with another commit.

Any workflow that involves breaking master for everyone seems broken at some level.

Not saying I have a better solution off the top of my head, but "just fix it with another commit" is a big red flag IME.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#216

Post by [deleted] »

erikwiffin wrote: post #157
jhugo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. It's probably not an accident that one of those numbers is half of 10 (and the number of fingers on one hand) – a common made-up number for everybody – and the other is 2^3 – a common made-up number for programmers.

I've always done planning poker with the Fibonacci sequence - 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. The idea being that the more complicated the task, the harder it is to estimate accurately.

[deleted]

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#217

Post by sethammons »

convolvatron wrote: post #130
lbriner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot get management buy-in to Scrum or most agile processes unless they can accept the agile manifesto principles. The whole idea that you can be agile while having delivery dates for things several months in advance is a nonsense. Agile is about doing what is important now, not doing what we thought was important a few months ago. The best you could probably hope for is Kanban or the never-ending backlog but s…

the idea that you can deliver a multi-month or multi-year project without ever looking past the next two week sprint is really misguided.

We just delivered a multi-year project under Scrum (edit: point of clarification, we did not have a due date). You still have a guiding vision and some idea of the major milestones you need to reach, you still define what the next set of milestones are. You will want several sprints worth of work lined up ready to be more concretely planned. You just do concrete planning for the next sprint or so and work to minimize disruption of that sprint. Learnings being incorporated and plans updated as needed. Work that will yield more understanding should be prioritized.

Not sure where the idea of "only look one sprint into the future thing" came from.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#218

Post by pc86 »

cheschire wrote: post #103
pc86 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like asking for a 6months dev work to help them save 1 hour annually on an annoying task they had to do. I see this as a complaint a lot, but... in a private company, they're the ones writing the checks. So if they want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save an hour, that's their prerogative. It's certainly our obligation to point out the cost (including ongoing maintenance) but again in a private compan…

Of course you have the option of saying "no" unless the company culture / leadership climate does not allow it. That's far from the inherent obligation you're describing. I do however agree with leaving any organization that does not allow you to express disagreement.

I think that depends on whether "no" means a nice way of saying "this is stupid" - which I agree with, and have done before, to mixed results - vs. outright refusing to do work that's been requested. I don't think an employee who is being paid a wage by an employer has the right to refuse to do something just because it's a stupid idea.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#219

Post by pc86 »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #186
pc86 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like asking for a 6months dev work to help them save 1 hour annually on an annoying task they had to do. I see this as a complaint a lot, but... in a private company, they're the ones writing the checks. So if they want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save an hour, that's their prerogative. It's certainly our obligation to point out the cost (including ongoing maintenance) but again in a private compan…

This is really only true of it's coming from the very top of the food chain. Sales is obviously an important part of the revenue stream, but it's not the only part and it doesn't automatically trump all other concerns. For example, it's not useful to sell a product that doesn't work, will cause huge customer churn and will destroy the company's reputation. If you're a shareholder or care about the longevity of your j…

Absolutely agreed, I implied with "writing the checks" it was the actual owner(s) of the business making the decision but could have been more explicit about it.

Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

#220

Post by amrx101 »

troupe wrote: post #106
akudha wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with any system is that people try to enforce it, military style. In my previous job, we did scrum, but not too strict. We had two week cycles, not-too-strict deadlines (most of the time) etc. If I finished my task early, I was free to pick up tasks from the planned list, without having to get permission from my manager. We also didn't agonize over story points, retrospective etc. We did it light hearted…

> debating whether it is worth 5 points are 8 I'm baffled by this behavior. If you know it is the next most important thing, why do you care? What would it change in your behavior if it is a 5 vs and 8? If you are looking at a task that you would choose not to do if it were an 8 but choose to do if it were a 5, then you probably look for something that is more important to work on. I think you are right that much of…

Exactly. Managers look for metrics and point and velocity are what they use.

Well anyway, managers in my current company are dumber than second coat of paint and I inflate points.

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