FASTER YOU FUCKERS - The ILX Work & Productivity Thread

disbenefits is v much a thing I'm afraid. can someone explain to me what a scrum meeting is please? I have a bucket handy.

"Knowledge Management on Sense-Making" is too good

Scrum is a software development methodology that revolves around "stories," "sprints, and daily "stand-ups."

ah, thanks. second one - sprint planning (often used in a daily meeting I have with some 3rd party developers, and at which I just silently mod my head).

Went to a chartered accountancy open evening

&?

the marketing director kept looking at me and adding on 'and we have .... options for.....older people too!'

he was like idk 12

i'll stick with the plan for a masters in IT

✓

At the last full-time job I had, a new CIO came in and forced the programming staff into adopting a agile dev. path with the daily scrum meeting. You can guess how well it went...

Six months after new CIO comes in, one-third of the programming staff leaves/laid-off - and then four months after that CIO is fired. Good job everyone!

It's actually gone really well for us, mostly because it forces the business to prioritize work as opposed to assuming all projects have equal priority and must be done yesterday.

Scrum is a software development methodology that revolves around "stories," "sprints, and daily "stand-ups."

We are doing this, or some variant on it, we don't call it Scrum, just Agile, which I gather Scrum is a type of. It's been a total nightmare so far. I think we're starting to turn it around a bit now no thanks to the product owner who is unfortunately also head of IT. So far "agile" has been an excuse to avoid actually planning how anything's going to work. I understand being flexible but I don't really know how to construct a system with no requirements whatsoever. We're also setting up a load of interface stuff without any front end design which seems bizarre to me. We don't even know what we're building it to do. Again "agile" is the reason why we're going to end up having to rewrite all of this in a month, repeat until project goes over deadline and gets canned (which is what happened to our last "agile" project).

I get the feeling that when this happens it's because of poor implementation of the theory rather than a problem with the theory itself.

there sounds like an awful lot of things you describe in there that shdnt be possible if following agile to the letter.

that said - as I think I wondered upthread, is ita metaflaw of these systems that they're more usually badly implemented than implemented well? the illusion of systemic security and a sort of cargo-cult attitude that these systems bring the rain, regardless of the people doing the voodoo. that the development/project management wd be better done in a less systemic way.

tho what do I mean by this? are notions of "more normal" ways of doing this just a reference to waterfall? are we always poorly executing the last system that was popular and assuming it is "common sense"? reading kipling with his descriptions of vast international civil service systems, with no thought to efficiency, just the recording of everything, a vast ledger of debits and credits - let's call it the Accountancy system - reminded me how important these systems of accomplishment are, with their notions of bounded perfectibility (recording perfectly will bring us total control/understanding) or "continuous improvement" (stasis is bad, it is possible to exist in a state of perpetual increases in efficiency (or quality I guess but usually means efficiency - these are systems of engineering efficiency) - an asymptotic nightmare of perpetually receding accomplishment.)

Pessoa too, with Soares sitting at his bookshop ledger, a reassuring symbol of the futile metaphysics of his life.

I was just considering Bradshaw - whose timetables of trains were proverbially inviolable, a law as fixed as the sun.

we now have a system of SLAs, of risk, of acceptable percentages of failure, derived from the important and reasonable engineering axiom that everything mechanical carries with it risk of failure, a notion transfered into non-mechanical environments into the notion that everything, any project, carries with it something called 'risk', and that therefore a certain amount of risk is to be expected and is therefore acceptable.

in fact these 'risks' are more usually risks to benefits, or aims often more nebulous than the ability of a machine to do a job consistently successfully.

the loss of certainty around what constitutes success and what constitutes failure probably results in the long-term failure of a lot of projects. or rather their ability to improve things less than expected for a greater than expected cost.

beyond a certain point it can appear that a project has had too much spent on it to fail - that the expense itself becomes a contributing reason to find efficiencies from within the project.

that's a point that appears imperceptibly and is continual - new madnesses of excess are always being reached because of the madnesses that have gone before. (again, I'm thinking of the BBC's Digital Media Initiative).

stakeholders become bound to an ixion's wheel where the aim is to sustain the project than deliver the expected aims within the expected cost.

and yet the system, and very often the people who are most integral to perpetuating the system and its failures survive, because it is not possible that the system is to blame, only the failure to carry it out. Stakeholders have a 'wash-up', where they talk about what would need to be improved next time (by which they mean the things that they will do again every time).

Just had a planning meeting for next sprint which is supposed to be the last one before a demo of skeleton site for the bosses. Idiot manager has finally come up with some requirements for what should be in the demo next week. The current implementation we have won't support half of them because I came up with the database design with only very vague "oh just make something up" info, so now we'll have to redesign the DB which means we'll have to fix a load of interface tasks we wrote before we had the design for what they were supposed to do, which means a load of tests will fail and probably our data migration process (another nightmare in itself) will need to be changed as well etc etc etc.

I didn't used to mind this guy being head of IT because while I had the impression he's a bumbling idiot he kind of just floated around the office not getting involved with anything, but now he's picked up this project, which is the most important project for the business for the whole year, and is doing his best to fuck it completely. I'd quit but the company is actually quite accommodating to my wife's health issues and I worry they'd get rid of her if I wasn't here, and since she was out of work for 18 months before I got her a job here that's not really an option. So I just have to get on with it. I sure do love feeling trapped.

sorry to hear that Colonel - it sounds fucked and v frustrating.

the amount of confusion people in charge of projects who cannot think clearly can wreak is staggering.

also then they get defensive and start lashing out at the people who were actually trying to do the tasks. in my experience anyway.

^^ yep. He's started complaining we haven't written enough documentation, in retaliation for us asking him where all the documentation is that he's supposed to be writing.

that said - as I think I wondered upthread, is ita metaflaw of these systems that they're more usually badly implemented than implemented well?

There's an assumption that the rest of your business until are just as optimized as your coding staff. Otherwise it's just one big Schlieffen Plan over the abyss...

Cool thread. My company has a massive online library with thousands of process/mgmt theory-type books with their own cult-like non-word words. It's amazing how many of these books cover the same generic processes under different names, and with minimum variation among the theories. And most just list a few case studies to "prove" their process works as stated.

xp - I enjoyed that Atlantic article linked above.

Quick note.

I think scrum meetigs are fine. More than fine, as it takes 10 mins to do - you only talk about what's blocking from doing what you were assigned to do, it gets to the problem quickly. You can get in a rut if the blocker isn't dealt with, but that's a problem with the wider project/programme.

Its an ideal meeting for people who hate meetings, but, like all ideals, rarely achieved.

I think scrum meetigs are fine. More than fine, as it takes 10 mins to do - you only talk about what's blocking from doing what you were assigned to do, it gets to the problem quickly. You can get in a rut if the blocker isn't dealt with, but that's a problem with the wider project/programme

LOL... the blockers were never dealt with, they were other departments of the company. Typical scrum meetings would take 45 minutes.

I've been in 30 min + scrum meetings but also ones where it was 10 mins without fail. Very lean. When it doesn't work its a gossip shop.

Our tester is not good at keeping to the basics

If there's no-one to push problems up to, who can mediate between you and other departments, that's not really the scrum meeting's fault though - and having a record of "Still no work done due to these fuckers" is handy.

Some updates:

Posting style needs CI trackers? Boards carrying too much inefficient resourcing? Insufficient Board Stakeholder accountability? Threads suffering blockers to completion?

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Workshop
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Also, just read this in Blanchot's essay on The Pure Novel, which reminded me strongly of a productivity/project management system and language description:

What is pure art? An art that will obey aesthetic necessity alone, an art that, rather than combine the representation of things with certain laws of sensibility, renounces imitation and even the conventions of meaning. The novel thus has serious pretensions to purity, since it claims to create, where necessary, a system that is absolute, comprehensive and indifferent to the ordinary circumstances of things, a system constituted by intrinsic relations and able to sustain itself without support from outside.

I'm not at work this week, took holiday, too skint to go abroad, just going DOWN and IN thru BOOKS, to tackle heartbreak and project management fatigue.

Also, NV, you mentioned an essay on how people with disabilities might be adversely affected by this sort of thing - is that still something potentially to hand? Wouldn't mind reading it.

Just had 5 hours of agile training.

Does it draw on d&d, RPGs, maybe fantasy in general for vocab? Was hearing a lot about artefacts and rituals (or ceremonies).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cdZBrZPzgCc/Twbh-zPlgCI/AAAAAAAACTc/O_2qCl7hN5k/s1600/dungeon_master.jpg

The ScrumMaster

haha, I'm a Certified ScrumMaster (TM, no doubt) and I've never used that shit for anything. Was a boring couple of days at work, certainly.

didn't really think there was much fantasy-ish about the vocabulary. Let's see what comes to mind. Scrum, increments, "burn down chart", sprints, backlogs, uhh product owner & team, grooming, cycles, retrospectives... nyeah, could be anything.

& xps to fizzles, I'd thought about starting a ilx stand-up/scrum thread. britishes office workers posting at 9:30am about yesterday's posts, their posting plans for today and blockers.

(Pint this week if you're around and about?)

true, all that stuff floated by me, I just started wondering where they got this from when we hit rituals and artefacts. I guess the sprint/scrum athletic vocab is nearer the front & the rest is just basic org-speak.

I think some call them "ceremonies" instead of "rituals"

Continuing my possibly terminal disregard of my agile tasks. A PM did one of mine for me today...

having a week off work and it's like recovering from a major trauma. just feel like I'm emerging from the illness/injury whatever and then it's straight back in. ugh. and I quite like my job!

surely many western countries are wealthy enough for people to work less - at least a day and an hour less per day for the remainder. put in place some sort of balance. increase employment. increase efficiency by reducing that Facebook (ilx!) time.

am I being hopelessly naive/thick? (I know there are reasons it would never happen, but economically speaking.)

I know exactly what yr feeling and thinking right now, the healthy sparkle has been obv from yr posts and ffs why must it be like this (I also quite like my job)

thanks Jon, that's what it feels like too! I've enjoyed participating more on ilx - simply haven't got the time at work, and the time out of it feels proportionately more precious - but also it feels more generally like I'm relaxing into myself again, remembering who I am, what I like doing etc.

couple of really good drinks with old friends has helped too, lights in the darkness, but as much as anything it's the hours, the luxurious hours, reading, pottering, tidying, internal time, woolgathering etc.

New year's resolution: hunt and kill whoever came up with "agile technology"

Had a mtg on thurs morning specifically dedicated to how I'm not keeping up w my Agile tasks...

Ugh. The new CIO who took over at my last job (and who eventually canned me) was an Aglie guy. Only bright spot was that he got canned a few months after me.

lol 'agile' that sounds like some bullshit

It would work but people have to make it work, and that is the problem..

I'm at the point now where I may deliberately start avoiding any jobs that have agile in the description. I'm sure it can work but I've worked on several agile projects at 2 different companies and it has been a nightmare every time.

I also love the whole "No True Scotsman" aspect to it whereby any criticism of agile is handwaved away by saying ah well if it didn't work then it wasn't truly agile.

lol

It is actually working reasonably well here, but I'm in the part of the organization that has some buy-in

I have been weaseling through the end of the year by creating tasks that are about a day worth of work and then picking them up one at a time.

I don't think i really understand what 'agile' means. It has been interpreted in my company as 'nobody has fixed roles but works on what they're told to as and when they're needed' which has come as a nasty surprise to some people who went through an acrimonious redundancy process and specifically refused to apply for some of the jobs they're now apparently lumbered with.

I now have to share my office with a tech team that has twenty-person scrum meetings in the middle of the corridor / in front of the kitchen door / in an impenetrable circle around my desk because actually booking a meeting room where they wouldn't be in everyone's way is passe. Bah!

we have assigned roles but, for instance, if we were way behind in testing and a test plan had been written, I could run some test cases

hallway scrum meetings are the worst, get a damn room

I'm at the point now where I may deliberately start avoiding any jobs that have agile in the description.

I always ask a potential employer if they're an agile shop up front. Then as you get into the details you can figure out if it's working for them or not (usually not)

Started working with a new client today who's super cool and trusts me enough to spec out and write what I see fit. The SysAdmin is into Zaooa and saw Hendrix. Probably at least three months of serious work at 24 hours a week. Great Cthulhu it's good to get some gas in the tank.

I have heard stories about your Sys Admin over this past weekend. Hope it's still going well! ;-)

So I'm being rather aggressively headhunted for a role in an "Agile Environment" - is Agile truly as bad and hated as everyone makes out? I guess I should read the whole thread and find out.

It seems to be very difficult for companies to implement Agile in not-terrible ways, as I have whinged about above.

I'm still at the same job now but I am definitely on my way out. I got asked into the meeting room with the 2 company directors on Friday where they told me I have to stop complaining about things because it's bad for morale. That is the last straw for me. The only reason I haven't already quit is there is a bonus for completing the current project by March 31st. Once we get to there and either I get the bonus or we don't get it, I am getting TFO of here. The 2 other people who sit on my row of desks are already working out their notice. I wonder if the IT manager is trying to spin it that they're leaving because I've lowered morale, rather than them leaving because he's made this place a nightmare to work. Not that it really matters. I checked out mentally a while ago.

hahahahahah Asana!!!!!! sorry ... Asana was the platform my colleague chose a few years ago to improve info sharing and delegation of tasks and .... he never used it, and they auto-renewed our annual subscription twice before I finally got him to give me the account credentials so I could cancel it.