Deadlines and sprints are bad for you • Hacker News Board

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#21

Post by rch » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #5

I think the author misses what the purpose of deadlines is. They are contracts between organizations for when software will be available, which are used for other organizations to make informed decisions without needing very tight and constant communication. They're analogous to SLAs in service-oriented designs. In a moderately large (say, 500+ employee) organization, deadlines are essential to get anything done. Sup…

I'd simply say that if something isn't ready, then as a general rule, don't make decisions as though it will be ready at a particular time in the future.

For instance, buying a home thinking that a new highway will be done around the time you move in could lead to multiple years of disappointment. Voting to allow your city to provide substantial financial incentives could enable the builder to go to extraordinary lengths to get the project done at the appointed time.... but even then, only within reason.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#22

Post by lima » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #19

lima wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the idea is that you don't set hard deadlines for the team - they're pointless. It results in unnecessary stress and work won't get done any faster (maybe in the short term, but it's unsustainable). Either the deadline is too short and your team has to work overtime, or it was too generous and you lose efficiency. The project manager, of course, still needs to be able to make an estimate according the his team's…

In fact, Scrum changed the word “commitment” to “forecast”. https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast “One of the most controversial updates to the 2011 Scrum Guide has been the removal of the term “commit” in favor of “forecast” in regards to the work selected for a Sprint. We used to say that the Development Team commits to which Product Backlog Items it will deliver by the end of the Sprint. Scrum now…

Yes - sprints can be a great estimation tool as long as they aren't mistaken for a deadline or performance measurement.

In my opinion, it needs be more like drawing a (rough) "this is how far we will get at the current velocity" line somewhere in the sorted backlog, rather than a fixed set of tickets that you expect to get done.

Popular tool-driven "agile" workflows where you move tickets into a particular sprint, followed by the admission of defeat at the next sprint planning meeting when you failed to complete all of them, reinforce the idea of "commitments" rather than "forecasts".

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#23

Post by Lewton » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

rch wrote: post #21

spenczar5 wrote: post #5

I think the author misses what the purpose of deadlines is. They are contracts between organizations for when software will be available, which are used for other organizations to make informed decisions without needing very tight and constant communication. They're analogous to SLAs in service-oriented designs. In a moderately large (say, 500+ employee) organization, deadlines are essential to get anything done. Sup…

I'd simply say that if something isn't ready, then as a general rule, don't make decisions as though it will be ready at a particular time in the future. For instance, buying a home thinking that a new highway will be done around the time you move in could lead to multiple years of disappointment. Voting to allow your city to provide substantial financial incentives could enable the builder to go to extraordinary len…

If you run your businsss like this you will be outcompeted by people who make reasonable guesses on when things will be completed

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#24

Post by cuspycode » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #5

I think the author misses what the purpose of deadlines is. They are contracts between organizations for when software will be available, which are used for other organizations to make informed decisions without needing very tight and constant communication. They're analogous to SLAs in service-oriented designs. In a moderately large (say, 500+ employee) organization, deadlines are essential to get anything done. Sup…

There are two kinds of deadlines: the ones imposed by objective facts (like for example the Y2K deadline), and the ones imposed by arbitrary decisions (like for example a milestone in a project plan). I think it is important to distinguish the two.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#25

Post by rch » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #23

rch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd simply say that if something isn't ready, then as a general rule, don't make decisions as though it will be ready at a particular time in the future. For instance, buying a home thinking that a new highway will be done around the time you move in could lead to multiple years of disappointment. Voting to allow your city to provide substantial financial incentives could enable the builder to go to extraordinary len…

If you run your businsss like this you will be outcompeted by people who make reasonable guesses on when things will be completed

Survival bias: companies that guess poorly aren't around to explain why they believed they were being reasonable.

...to expand a bit: you're more likely to benefit from correct forward looking estimates if you have sound alternatives available when those estimates to be less than completely accurate.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#26

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #5

I think the author misses what the purpose of deadlines is. They are contracts between organizations for when software will be available, which are used for other organizations to make informed decisions without needing very tight and constant communication. They're analogous to SLAs in service-oriented designs. In a moderately large (say, 500+ employee) organization, deadlines are essential to get anything done. Sup…

An estimate is not a deadline. A deadline is not an estimate. Mixing them up leads to unhappiness.

Giving an estimate should not come with the whiff of punishment for probabilistic inaccuracy, potentially due to factors out of one's control.

That's what deadlines do. That's why they distort behaviour.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#27

Post by tedmiston » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #15

The author deeply misunderstands Scrum. They also misspell it as SCRUM but that's another story... Sprints are timeboxes and not deadlines. Stuff is done at a "normal" pace and it either fits (or does not) in that timebox. Fundamentally, it does not really matter in itself. Noting down whether the estimation was correct or not, though, is important. The whole point is that a team is supposed to get more _predictable_…

This nails it for me. I have seen too many scrum implementations give insufficient weight to pointing, leaving it undecided whether the pointing scale is linear or something else, pointing inconsistently across people within a team, and most importantly not accounting for when reality differs from estimates over time. IMO this leads to foregoing one of the most important benefits of doing scrum in the first place.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#28

Post by badfrog » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

cuspycode wrote: post #24

spenczar5 wrote: post #5

I think the author misses what the purpose of deadlines is. They are contracts between organizations for when software will be available, which are used for other organizations to make informed decisions without needing very tight and constant communication. They're analogous to SLAs in service-oriented designs. In a moderately large (say, 500+ employee) organization, deadlines are essential to get anything done. Sup…

There are two kinds of deadlines: the ones imposed by objective facts (like for example the Y2K deadline), and the ones imposed by arbitrary decisions (like for example a milestone in a project plan). I think it is important to distinguish the two.

Usually when you set an arbitrary deadline, it quickly becomes less arbitrary. See OP's example of the finance team depending on a certain timing that they were promised.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#29

Post by mamon » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #15

The author deeply misunderstands Scrum. They also misspell it as SCRUM but that's another story... Sprints are timeboxes and not deadlines. Stuff is done at a "normal" pace and it either fits (or does not) in that timebox. Fundamentally, it does not really matter in itself. Noting down whether the estimation was correct or not, though, is important. The whole point is that a team is supposed to get more _predictable_…

I really hope I'll live long enough to be in the Scrum project that's run this way. In all the companies I worked for Scrum with its sprint and daily stand-up meetings just becomes a tool for micromanaging the team.

EDIT: My own understanding of Scrum was, that you can commit to a deadline for the whole project (say, we'll have this application ready by the end of Q3), and then use sprints and backlog prioritization to manipulate the project scope. So, when you hit the deadline you always have ready to use product, just maybe with less functionality than intended.

Re: Deadlines and sprints are bad for you

#30

Post by mattnewport » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #15

The author deeply misunderstands Scrum. They also misspell it as SCRUM but that's another story... Sprints are timeboxes and not deadlines. Stuff is done at a "normal" pace and it either fits (or does not) in that timebox. Fundamentally, it does not really matter in itself. Noting down whether the estimation was correct or not, though, is important. The whole point is that a team is supposed to get more _predictable_…

This is one of the reasons Scrum stopped using the word commitment in favor of forecast https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast

Most people who say they are doing Scrum or think they are doing Scrum aren't really. Scrum is far from perfect but it's better than most of the bastardizations people invent for themselves when they claim to be doing it.