How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by regularfry » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #368

regularfry wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Shopify, but in general you want teams that don't need anyone to tell them what to deliver and when because they can be trusted to figure that out for themselves and make a good call. That can't be done without having customer representation on the team (which you should anyway), and having engineers capable of taking a customer viewpoint. That is what "self-organising" should mean, but few organisa…

There's a vast difference between being a cost center and being willing to set money on fire. Our teams have a lot of autonomy or at least influence in product strategy but it's because we empower our product managers, designers and researchers to help business understand how to achieve their goals. A lot of these projects are greenfield where the team comes in pretty blank on what needs doing. Developers are part of…

Then that's the difference. Siloing devs away from the customers is something you see as a positive. Which, for some situations, it can be. But if you're in a situation where there's meaningful advantage in cutting the feedback loop down and reducing the number of handoffs between functions, it's not.

The key here is that you're using the third person: "their goals", "their money". "Business" is a remote third party, distinct from your teams. It might work, and a lot of people do it that way, it might be the only way your business model can work, but it's a long way from optimal.

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

#412

Post by gampleman » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #345

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…

Funny, retros are the one thing I like. If you can get a team to honestly say what went well and what went bad, and the step that can be taken to improve, every two weeks, with some light follow up. In 6 - 12 months, you can turn a flaming wreck of a project into something that resembles best practice. I have do it as a consultant. I have taken a project on life support that they were gonna cancel, regardless of our…

Retros are great iff there is team empowered to actually meaningfully change stuff. I've been in places where everyone agrees that something sucks but there is no actual way to change it. Then retros turn into an impotent bitching session... no thanks.

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

#413

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 11:40 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #97

arcbyte wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Dev, I loved SAFE. It changed everything about how our program operated to the point our delivery became extremely predictable and we still had every 9th and 10th week to tinker on new ideas or do refactoring and cleanup where we wanted. That program purred like nothing else I've ever been a part of. Senior leaders sat with devs, started talking to everyone about their priorities - people we had never seen befor…

Why is it that every criticism of agile/scrum/safe is met with "well you just weren't really doing it?"

> Why is it that every criticism of agile/scrum/safe is met with "well you just weren't really doing it?"

Not every criticism. Just every criticism that is actually people just not doing it. "Standups become status update meetings, therefore Scrum is stupid" is an example.

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

#414

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #160

mLuby wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A general goes to the commander of a group of soldiers and says "In 3 months, I want them to be able to demo the "march in formation" feature in front of the big-wigs who decide whether to give us more funding." So the commander says "Yes General, we'll do Drills™ to make it happen." And then the commander writes down "Do drills" on a TODO list, gives presentations to the soldiers about the importance of drills, and…

But lots of developers actually hates Scrum even when done correctly. The problem is that Scrum is very rigid, it tells you how long your development cycle should be, what your meetings should look like etc. They'd prefer to just do what needs done, have the meetings that needs to be had, deliver features when ready rather than have arbitrary deadlines (sprints) etc. I understand that many developers loves having tha…

> it tells you how long your development cycle should be

No it doesn't. Refuting claims about Scrum that are definitionally wrong stops us actually having useful conversations about whether actual Scrum is good or not.

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

#415

Post by snidane » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 11:42 AM UTC

hatchnyc wrote: post #22

> Engineers are encouraged to interact with the rest of the business and build relationships with non-engineers. In contrast, traditional companies often make it impossible for developers to interact with the rest of the business. In my experience “traditional companies” will often have a bunch of people in cushy “gatekeeping“ jobs whose main function is basically forwarding emails back and forth between devs and the…

The best arrangement is to have business report to business and engineers report to IT, but have them communicate directly. This was they can't be pressured by business into short term tasks, because they are on the same level and not just mere subordinates of business folks.

In traditional (not engineer-first) companies, engineers are subordinates of PMs or business directly without their own agenda, so they just accept the fate and become a feature factory for the company.

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

#416

Post by nudgeee » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

la6471 wrote: post #141

lordnacho wrote: post #17

The thing about Scrum is the observations and principles make sense, but then to sell it as a course they've turned it into very specific prescriptions. I went on a scrum course and the takeaway was basically that feedback is a big deal, and you should try to get some repeatedly and quickly. It's also common sense that you should have tasks written down somewhere, and that some of them are more important than others.…

The author is not completely correct , in big tech project managers are assigned to manage projects , depending on complexity and collaboration needs.

This is covered in the article:

> For complex projects that span several teams across different offices and time zones, leading such a project is a full-time job for an engineer. Big Tech pulls in Technical Project Managers (TPMs) to manage these complex, and often strategic projects, taking the load off engineers.

> Dedicated Program Managers or Project Managers still exist within Big Tech. They are typically tied to external-facing commitments and customers – such as a Program Manager for the Apple partnership – or to long-running initiatives, like a compliance program. Similar to how TPMs are not allocated to a single engineering team, these Program Managers or Product Managers also don’t tend to have an engineering team, but they work across many teams instead.

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

#417

Post by tootie » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #411

tootie wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a vast difference between being a cost center and being willing to set money on fire. Our teams have a lot of autonomy or at least influence in product strategy but it's because we empower our product managers, designers and researchers to help business understand how to achieve their goals. A lot of these projects are greenfield where the team comes in pretty blank on what needs doing. Developers are part of…

Then that's the difference. Siloing devs away from the customers is something you see as a positive. Which, for some situations, it can be. But if you're in a situation where there's meaningful advantage in cutting the feedback loop down and reducing the number of handoffs between functions, it's not. The key here is that you're using the third person: "their goals", "their money". "Business" is a remote third party,…

We're absolutely not siloed. It's a question of expertise and attention. And also we're media so we have millions of users with extremely varied habits and needs. Discovering what those are is a huge job and one best done by a dedicated expert. I can't spend my dev hours having them sit and listen to stories about business process and sales funnels when there's dev tasks to do. Unless your company only has a single job title where everyone does everything, then I don't think we're doing anything crazy.

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

#418

Post by esel2k » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #142

My theory is that in tech companies top management usually understands how tech development works and have respect for their workers. At my company top management often comes from a sales or medical background and you can clearly see that in how they treat sales people and medical people. They get promoted more and receive way more attention from management because they understand each other. IT and software are a bi…

Same here. Worked all my career on medical/biotech as software product and project manager. I‘ve even heard management telling me „this is just code, should be copy paste“ and „why is this taking so long that should be easy“… and if things of course don’t go as planned they layoff and hire Accenture.

My role (as I see it) is to keep devs motivated, translate this mystery of development for them and present some kind of roadmap. As much as I would love to only work with empowered teams, the reality is that with these big nontech companies are not ready to change anytime soon.

Maybe we worked at the same place?:)

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

#419

Post by belter » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

Scrum is one of the worst things ever to happen to Software Developers. The embodiment of metric rigging, and Developer disenfranchisement. A dream for a certain type of manager. I changed career not to have to use it.

Can you imagine Linus, John Cormack or Brian Kerningan having to stand up every morning, providing updates on what bug or feature they are working on? Which one would throw its mouse to the Scrum Master head first, when he would complain about their project "velocity"?

Use the "One Hacker Way" instead: https://youtu.be/FvMuPtuvP5w

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

#420

Post by spaetzleesser » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

esel2k wrote: post #418

spaetzleesser wrote: post #142

My theory is that in tech companies top management usually understands how tech development works and have respect for their workers. At my company top management often comes from a sales or medical background and you can clearly see that in how they treat sales people and medical people. They get promoted more and receive way more attention from management because they understand each other. IT and software are a bi…

Same here. Worked all my career on medical/biotech as software product and project manager. I‘ve even heard management telling me „this is just code, should be copy paste“ and „why is this taking so long that should be easy“… and if things of course don’t go as planned they layoff and hire Accenture. My role (as I see it) is to keep devs motivated, translate this mystery of development for them and present some kind…

“lay-off and hire Accenture”

Seems we are at different companies and my company is a step ahead. After Accenture then comes TCS where nobody knows anything :).