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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

#261

Post by tomc1985 »

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.

Why is story point estimation tied to fibonacci sequence? Two generations of managers at my previous employment thought this way. It just seems so arbitrary to me.

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

#263

Post by brightball »

namdnay wrote: post #193
brightball wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many companies running SAFe on the east coast and it’s generally an improvement across the board from everybody I talk to. The only problems I’ve seen are from 2 camps: the people who don’t want to have to plan anything and the people who want everything that is planned to be 100% accurate and not a best guess. Either of these two groups will cause problems to a process like this with the latter usually being…

come on... https://www.agilest.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/scaled-ag... how dysfunctional must an organisation be for that to be an improvement? And in what way is that agile?

I hate that diagram. It looks like gibberish to anyone who hasn’t gone through a training to understand it, and even this it still looks like gibberish.

SAFe is about addressing the communication problems that happen as an organization grows. You’re looking at the diagram for everything that would be applied to a very large organization.

SAFe itself has a goal of using 50-150 person “release trains” that are essentially independent units. That’s the core of what’s going on.

Everything outside of that is about managing communication between other “trains”. In the diagram that you’re looking at, the bottom 2 sections where the CD Pipeline sits is where most developers will experience SAFe and you’ll find that it simply advocates for DevOps best practices.

I completely understand how everything else looks like a mess. It’s a lot to digest.

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

#264

Post by w0mbat »

Startups implement Scrum or nothing, but the FAANGs each have an existing unique process with a cargo-cult veneer of Scrum on top.

All Scrum really means at a big co is an extra morning meeting that penalizes both people who like to work late and parents who need to get their kids to school. Plus you may occasionally hear the word "sprint" but it doesn't mean anything as you can be given an urgent task or have a feature cancelled at any time.

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

#265

Post by rightbyte »

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.

What is needed is registrars keeping track of documents and writing summaries etc. I blame the 'savings' on secretaries for many of the modern corporate worlds problems. A tell tail of that the top brass them-self don't believe secretaries are not needed, is that they them-self have them. It is just engineering that can't have them - pushing any bigger engineering org. into chaos.

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

#266

Post by troupe »

tomc1985 wrote: post #261
erikwiffin wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is story point estimation tied to fibonacci sequence? Two generations of managers at my previous employment thought this way. It just seems so arbitrary to me.

The closer the numbers are together the more time is wasted trying to be exact about them. Fib helps reduce the amount of back and forth. If you need to guess how much something weighs and your options are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14.....100, you are going to have a lot harder time achieving consensus than if you asks "Is it heavier or lighter than a breadbox?"

At least that is the idea.

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

#267

Post by SkyPuncher »

mbeex wrote: post #164

I was there when Agile was invented. In my opinion, Scrum has always been the worst embodiment of a good idea. In terms of content, teams of experienced developers have always worked in the spirit of Agile (of course there are exceptions). This informal understanding was and is superior to a formal horizontal Scrum implementation. For example, it preserves seniority and true accountability - two things that Scrum pre…

> These days, mandatory Scrum is a contra-indicator for any project that crosses my path as a freelancer.

Hmm. Scrum seems like a relatively good means of aligning two-parties with low-context.

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

#268

Post by troupe »

erikwiffin wrote: post #128
troupe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think there's value in that debate (within reason) even as a developer. If Alice thinks a task is worth 5, and Bob thinks it's worth 8, then there's a good chance one of them knows something the other does not. Is Bob aware of some hidden complexity that bumps it up 3 points? Or is Alice familiar with a convenient library that solves exactly that complexity? Planning poker is a convenient time to get that knowledge…

If you will do something different with a 5 than with an 8 then yes. If not, then the ambiguities you describe will be worked out when you do the work. It is just a vanity metrics if the results doesn't change what you work on next. It seems important but it has no actual bearing on the teams sequencing of the work.

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

#269

Post by yyyk »

lbriner wrote: post #54
root-z wrote: post #44

I worked at a big tech for many years and my team never managed to get Scrum working properly. Every year my team commits a delivering certain product/features at a very specific date (some sort of launch event), so we have to know very early in the year what's all the work required and report periodically whether project is on track. The deadlines are also always on the tighter end. The flexibility of Scrum becomes…

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 whole idea that you can be agile while having delivery dates for things several months in advance is a nonsense

If Agile truly rejects even the possibility of an estimation (something I'm sure many proponents will disagree with), that would be a problem with Agile and not a problem with the idea of estimation. Companies will de facto pivot away to methods that will give an estimation, even if they're 'bad Agile' and even if software engineers are unhappy about it.

Because there are more useful things to optimize for than efficiency of software delivery or what software engineers like. People really need to know when the works on their street will be done, companies and countries need to plan ahead, and so on.

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

#270

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

ironmagma wrote: post #119
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refuse to work at places that practice?

No, I want to be able to represent myself as authoritatively as the guy who proclaims to be “scrum certified,” as though scrum is so valuable as to have a certification.

Did you miss the /s by any chance? I pray to god that you did.
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