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Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

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Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#21

Post by arcbyte »

goldcd wrote: post #16
ec109685 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiding things like “projects” from devs and keeping them isolated and working through their backlog blissfully unaware of the travails of the PM seems awfully top down. A PM should bring the team together, collaboratively work on what should be in the backlog, and provide enough context to the whole team so they can self organize and holistically deliver maximum value to the consumer. 10 heads are far better than a s…

Sorry, definitely wasn't saying "hide projects from devs" As PdO I see my job (and also that of my partner Dev Manager) as sheltering dev from the shit churning shit above and my sole purpose as providing backlog/semi-coherent guidance. My downward job is to make sure every 2 weeks some contiguous stories get created and I sign off on their completion on the way back up - and if my requests match what I get back, I h…

Your job as a product owner, as it relates to developers, is to be the customer so we dont have to waste time in phone tag. That meana you have to get inside the customers head and figure out what they want better than they know it and to take accountability when the team built what you thought the customer wanted but you fucked it up.

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#23

Post by mulmen »

goldcd wrote: post #7

I'm not disagreeing with the article, I'm just wondering what painful 'project' oritentated piece of work the writer has had to endure when it crashed into their life. To my mind there are products and milestones as maybe a point releases within a product - Agile/Scrum. I've suffered many systems over the years, but this is the one that makes the most sense - and maybe most importantly demarcates responsibilities. Pr…

Why would proDUct management decide what impacts dev? Surely that’s a question for proJEct management?

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#24

Post by roenxi »

ProfMeowsworth wrote: post #4
Jensson wrote: post #2

Isn't this just scrum? Scrum is very popular.

Came here to say that. The author spends a lot of effort to basically describe working in sprints.

"Sprint" is a label. Someone needs to put a lot o effort into describing what a sprint actually is, or people will use the label on things that are not sprints.

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#25

Post by ec109685 »

goldcd wrote: post #16
ec109685 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiding things like “projects” from devs and keeping them isolated and working through their backlog blissfully unaware of the travails of the PM seems awfully top down. A PM should bring the team together, collaboratively work on what should be in the backlog, and provide enough context to the whole team so they can self organize and holistically deliver maximum value to the consumer. 10 heads are far better than a s…

Sorry, definitely wasn't saying "hide projects from devs" As PdO I see my job (and also that of my partner Dev Manager) as sheltering dev from the shit churning shit above and my sole purpose as providing backlog/semi-coherent guidance. My downward job is to make sure every 2 weeks some contiguous stories get created and I sign off on their completion on the way back up - and if my requests match what I get back, I h…

I still think you’ve set things up so that the direction for the whole team almost exclusively has to come from you.

If you could share this responsibility with the team so they know the context and outcomes desired by the business, you’ll have a larger pool of good ideas, including from folks who deeply know the code and push the roadmap from that perspective.

E.g. creating a holistic thinking environment: https://headheartbrain.com/resources/creating-a-thinking-env...

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#26

Post by jaderubick »

sys_64738 wrote: post #22

Think of driving from point A to point B. A project is completing the journey. A milestone is like a major stopping point or identifying landmark that is unique and distinct. A mile marker is like a sprint story.

A milestone == a mile marker. That is where the term came from.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milestone

I think the term is rather unimportant. You could also use the term epic.

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#27

Post by ec109685 »

arcbyte wrote: post #21
goldcd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, definitely wasn't saying "hide projects from devs" As PdO I see my job (and also that of my partner Dev Manager) as sheltering dev from the shit churning shit above and my sole purpose as providing backlog/semi-coherent guidance. My downward job is to make sure every 2 weeks some contiguous stories get created and I sign off on their completion on the way back up - and if my requests match what I get back, I h…

Your job as a product owner, as it relates to developers, is to be the customer so we dont have to waste time in phone tag. That meana you have to get inside the customers head and figure out what they want better than they know it and to take accountability when the team built what you thought the customer wanted but you fucked it up.

Why should that responsibility solely come from the product manager? Are devs incapable of their own good ideas if given a chance to understand the customer as well?

The product manager should be the overall decider, but the best products do not germinate out of a single person’s head.

Re: Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

#30

Post by yodon »

ec109685 wrote: post #27
arcbyte wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your job as a product owner, as it relates to developers, is to be the customer so we dont have to waste time in phone tag. That meana you have to get inside the customers head and figure out what they want better than they know it and to take accountability when the team built what you thought the customer wanted but you fucked it up.

Why should that responsibility solely come from the product manager? Are devs incapable of their own good ideas if given a chance to understand the customer as well? The product manager should be the overall decider, but the best products do not germinate out of a single person’s head.

The person you're responding to is not advocating that ideas are the responsibility of the PM, nor are they saying the PM should be the overall decider.

They are saying the PM is responsible for collecting information from the customer and bringing that information to the team in an efficient manner so the team can make decisions based on that information.

If the PM brings incorrect or inadequate information, the resulting product will be poor because the team will have made its decisions on the basis of that poor information.

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