131–140 of 446 posts
One could frame the entire US military budget as preventative spend.
This is wonderful description of the kind of hellhole corporate Scrum is turning into. Agile was literally about doing things quickly and quick cycles of capability improvement. But Scrum is a worse version of the planning processes it meant to replace! If anything, the way scrum lays out the work into immediate problems exacerbates the cycle. In the long run it just turns into a ticketing system where fires get push…
I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.
Easy - half a$$ your code and when it breaks - swoop in, "fix things" (actually do it right) and play the role of hero! (I've seen so-called "Rock Stars" at places I worked do this over and over)
This is wonderful description of the kind of hellhole corporate Scrum is turning into. Agile was literally about doing things quickly and quick cycles of capability improvement. But Scrum is a worse version of the planning processes it meant to replace! If anything, the way scrum lays out the work into immediate problems exacerbates the cycle. In the long run it just turns into a ticketing system where fires get push…
You say this as if it was a coincidence.
I'm allowed to say such things. Some of my best friends are scrum masters.
My manager just told me I got a 3/5 on my eval yet again because in the past six months
- I did everything that was asked of me and
- I did a lot of things that weren't asked of me and
- I didn't catch anything on fire and
- I put out someone else's fire and
- I prevented several fires from ever being started in the first place,
but that's not good enough. The person who started the fire that I put out is getting promoted because they showed initiative in starting the fire. I didn't show enough initiative putting it out for them or preventing fires on multiple other projects. Apparently creating two of my own projects that never caught on fire also didn't demonstrate enough initiative. From now on I'm applying for one new job per day on company time.
I tend to prefer working with people whose stuff "just works". I take that back. I strongly prefer working with them.
This happens in organizations that don't measure and respect precursors or leading indicators of success/failure -- organizations that do not practice organizational observability, to coin a phrase. Which is to say, most of them, because this is not something one thinks of until one has suffered its absence. Your managers have to think like SREs, and be technically sophisticated enough to model and address this probl…
This happens in organizations that become over reliant on metrics and indicators of success/failure instead of recognizing that these are fuzzy concepts and indicators are just that... indications, not answers.
This is wonderful description of the kind of hellhole corporate Scrum is turning into. Agile was literally about doing things quickly and quick cycles of capability improvement. But Scrum is a worse version of the planning processes it meant to replace! If anything, the way scrum lays out the work into immediate problems exacerbates the cycle. In the long run it just turns into a ticketing system where fires get push…
I found the idea Scrum being efficient when done right was true at one company I worked at. Everyone was committed to the process, the Scrum team included debt as a priority for 20% of the effort and everyone had a fairly accurate velocity that we could bake in an additional 20% of your work as your own interests, so stakeholder priorities filled that remaining 60%. Then we would pivot in some Sprints if any epic/tea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy - half a$$ your code and when it breaks - swoop in, "fix things" (actually do it right) and play the role of hero! (I've seen so-called "Rock Stars" at places I worked do this over and over)
This is exactly what happens at many software companies. People,sometimes under pressure to meet deadlines, apply totally crazy fixes to stop one problem and create new problems.
Or. Dev hacks a fix up, sends to prod. Sees another bug and fixes immediately. No loss in revenue/customers/favorite vanity metric/whatever. Dev creates ticket to refactor/fix code properly and adds to next sprint. PM removes from next sprint to get capacity for further resume driven management projects. Issue crops up again due to hack. Original dev is now able to do ticket originally removed from sprint.
I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.