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We Still Don’t Get Things Done

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Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#151

Post by netjiro »

rossdavidh wrote: post #55

Should be "We Still Don't Get Everything Done". Obvious point, but it is crucial to recognize. Lots of stuff gets done, just not everything you thought would. Which is why TODO lists can be useful (for me, anyway), but don't get any more complicated than just a list (I use a chalkboard for non-work and a txt file for work). 1) I need to not forget to do this thing 2) but I can only do one thing right now 3) put the o…

Agree.

Misaligned expectations. A todo list is an overhead. It is only helpful if it actually helps you remember / plan / coordinate / communicate more than the cost of maintenance.

Common misconception / misuse: a todo list is a hard set plan of things that have to get done.

For most, this is simply not reality.

Reality, for most ppl: it is a wishlist.

It is better to have that realisation from the start and avoid the negative psychological effect of unfinished todo items or miscommunication / malcoordination of mistaking it for future reality.

One startup I was helping a while back had serious todo-itis, with the common negative effects. To help: I bought shitty post-it stickers with very poor glue. They would fall to the floor in random fashion after a week or two [1]. This created a ridiculous exercise where the founder would update the notes that were still important to new stickys. But he would also start throwing things away. Stuff that was no longer that important. Wishlist.

Always work on the most important stuff. Items of lower priority can be allowed to fall off the list. By the time you might get around to them the circumstances have probably changed, rendering the original task irrelevant anyway.

1) occasionally by sabotage

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#152

Post by tempodox »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a similar problem as we (humans) have with all systems: we mistake the system for the actual solution. It's not. You need to focus on the real problem at hand, and devise/adapt a correct solution in context. Systems and frameworks provide helpful tools and templates, but they all require contextual adaptation. FWIW this is what I like about the foundations of Agile for project management. The manifesto po…

This is not unusual. Something like ISO9001 Quality Management is literally a checklist of pleasant aspirations which leaves companies to define the details for themselves. So as long as you define what "leadership" or "customer satisfaction" (and the rest) mean to you, and you have a vaguely plausible but not necessarily effective process that ticks each of the boxes, you have a quality management process. And you c…

My shorthand for that is “Bureaucracy allows us to ignore reality”. If we ignore reality enough, bureaucracy / following a process will give us predictability and control, and will shield us from unwelcome challenges. Reality, otoh, is unpredictable and merciless in confronting us with challenges. The more mandatory we can make that process, the more “following process” becomes the sole criterion for “doing it right”, the more we'll be able to insulate ourselves from bothering with the whims of reality. It seems clear to me that this dynamic has the structure of a perverse incentive, even more so when you have considerable influence over the rules of that process.

This isn't to say that we should just do away with all process. There are good, even life-saving reasons why processes exist, but a process alone is no cure-all, and an overdose will paralyze us.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#153

Post by vidarh »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #96
albertzeyer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't exactly understand your criticism on best practices. You seem to imply that UML or other project management software are considered best practices. I have never heard that. Or rather the opposite. Not using UML is currently considered as best practice. But maybe it depends who you ask.

Yeah I studied UML during uni. It took a long time to 'click' and when it did I learned some useful concepts from it. Only then did OOP really make sense. However it's way too laborious using it for everything and it becomes a burden when things get complicated. For simple things it just doesn't really help because they're simple anyway. As a learning tool I think it was great. In production? Well I use it every day.…

UML done "right" is when you relegate it to simply being a shared vocabulary used when you have a need to communicate details, the same way "everyone" understands a basic flow chart.

Having a shared vocabulary is great.

Modelling everything out with it, on the other hand, is a nightmare.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#154

Post by RandomLensman »

moksly wrote: post #32

The more project management tools I have to work with, the less likely I am to work for or with a company. I have a somewhat similar stance on software architecture. Sure, I’m TOGAF certified but if you actually expect me to work with notation correct Archimare/UML/whatever and not just draw boxes on a napkin you’re either insane or sell a product with no competition. This is anecdotal of course, but after 30 years o…

You can sell processes as well best practice and manage towards KPIs related to them. Most organizations really don't have enough quality and skill to run in more outcome oriented way, I reckon.

Also, most best practices peddled are supported only be flimsy data and anecdotes - only very few areas that are different. I have seen some examples in medicine that had a lot data behind them (not all of medicine by a long shot, though).

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#155

Post by dgb23 »

Doches wrote: post #38

This is _exactly_ why I stopped keeping TODO lists, and started keeping DONE lists instead. What's a done list? Think of it as an anti-TODO list: your DONE list is where you write down everything that you've, well, done. You know that little dopamine kick you get from filing a neatly-tagged TODO or marking off something that you've finished? A done list is just that, and the only way to use it is to train yourself to…

Git kind of feels this way when I’m using it properly.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#156

Post by DanielBMarkham »

A year or two ago I was writing some training material on how to keep your software solutions as simple as possible. (In my mind this is the most critical skill in software development that nobody seems to actually teach)

I decided to use project management as an example. It's a known field, it's something most everybody can relate to, it looks like something a lot of coders kick around, and it's commonly way, way overdone. So I started with first principles and went at it.

Ended up with a few dozen lines of code and a text file. That's it. That's all you need to manage projects from a single person on up to a large-scale program. I integrated with Trello and Google sheets in order to provide whatever graphics people wanted, but with the same general amount of complexity you could integrate with a bunch of other stuff.

I remain convinced that the greatest learning experiences I've had in software development over the last decade or so have been these little experiments where I take a commonly over-engineered solution area and poke at it to see just how much complexity is actually required. Every time I do it, it astounds me at the amount of counter-productivity we coders bring to many of the things we create in order to increase productivity. A humbling experience, to say the least.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#157

Post by BoxOfRain »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #94
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a similar problem as we (humans) have with all systems: we mistake the system for the actual solution. It's not. You need to focus on the real problem at hand, and devise/adapt a correct solution in context. Systems and frameworks provide helpful tools and templates, but they all require contextual adaptation. FWIW this is what I like about the foundations of Agile for project management. The manifesto po…

Yeah a lot of companies go like "we're going agile" and just do the tools bit with Jira and its Kanban and rigid time management. It's more like ticking boxes and pretending to know what they're doing than actual agile project management. So now we're stuck with a lot of overhead crap and even more workload. And the system actually slows us down when we try to adapt to a changing environment. Problem is mainly that t…

Jira to me is a mostly a tool for managers to coerce developers into a more manager-friendly interpretation of “agile” than anything else rather than something developers would use out of choice.

When you’re doing something for the sole purpose of keeping someone off your back about it then you inevitably half-arse it, so in reality we’re paying Atlassian a small fortune for nothing more than a wall of fairly bullshit estimates. Don’t even get me started on how slow and flakey the UI is on the cloud version, it’s such an intolerably poor quality bit of software to actually use as a dev. I’d be very surprised if Atlassian actually dogfooded the cloud version because it really is an abysmal effort.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#158

Post by _moof »

LVB wrote: post #29

>Every to-do list is, ultimately, about death. This succinctly captures something I've thought more about as I've gotten older (now 47). This is especially true around the "Someday/Maybe" category in my system. Some items in there are themselves nearly teenagers! And it is sobering how few of these bigger items actually get done or even thought about in a year. But at least I'm checking off dozens of minutia tasks ea…

Saturn has completed slightly more than an entire orbit in the time I’ve been theoretically designing a video game. Someday/maybe indeed!

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#159

Post by BenderV »

I recently removed my personal todo list.

I found that it was usually a way to not think about the different issues/projets I had in mind. Removing the todo list forced me to remember the list, to think about possible solutions or related task I wanted to do.

I was really, really productive for few weeks...

Unfortunately, I quickly fallback to my old habits of listing todo... Simply because I don't give myself proper time to think about what I want to do.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#160

Post by quartesixte »

colechristensen wrote: post #134
jkhdigital wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what middle managers do in physical production processes: removing barriers, and reviewing processes for continuous improvement. For whatever reason, management science has not caught up to the ubiquity of knowledge work in the modern economy.

From my perspective, some of what middle managers do is helpful, much of what they do could just was well not be done. My point being that these tools create work from top to bottom. There's information to fill out, statuses to be updated, progress to be tracked, reports to be generated, etc. etc. etc. which all fall on to a spectrum of "things which have utility" and "things which are busywork" often heavily favorin…

I wonder if HN’s demographics contributes to a general disdain for middle management because, from my non-software engineering point of view, software doesn’t need a lot of management to produce.

Hardware on the other hand, needs an organization layer on top of the production layer. Removing barriers, creating traceability, improving processes, and trying to get multiple different teams to work together efficiently.

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