"Burndown charts."
Best cover for teams trying to look busy and justify their headcount.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Programming
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The original "agile" is a reaction to the overly rigid planning and emphasizes worker self-management. It makes sense since the people who are closest to the work (the workers) know best how to plan and implement the work.
It immediately breaks down when a specialized management tier emerges and tries to push their own agenda, i.e. to sell themselves rather than do something meaningful.
At this point, whichever form is used doesn't matter. The management, endowed with the power from above, will exploit the weakness of any agile-shmagile methodology to push their own agenda.
Makes sense. My company was recently purchased and now we're getting ready to start "working more agile". I love the idea of it helping with the structure of our team. But, I can also read between the lines.
This is too close to home.
It's time to break free from Corporate.
We’d like you to be “agile” by following these very specific and rigid set of rules and procedures.
Hello, we need you to spend more time discussing schedules in meetings with your whole team attending so that everyone can go faster.
My experience is that a team should self-organize and decide how to work by trying things out and see what works well for them.
Anyone trying to force a framework down on people is wrong because different people/teams prefer working in different ways. I've never experienced following a framework rigidly as beneficial.
Workers who choose the path of least resistance may not speak up about barriers to work that they face for fear of conflict or apprehension to change.
Or because it's not their job to do that. Tech perpetuates this "entrepreneurial mindset" bullshit, saying that for the wage paid for your work, you are also responsible for the company as a whole. Fuck no, especially since most devs can't do shit about it. If you own a company and decide that I spend most of my productive time in bullshit meetings, you still pay me, just not for stuff you can actually sell. If the meetings start grinding my gears, I might hop over to a place where stuff makes more sense.
Workers are not there to make up for the bullshit management pulls. If your company is inefficient and mismanaged, look for the problem in management.
Personally, I understood that sentence as mainly pointing out that you're hindered in your work.
If you don't have to perform activitism to get things changed, and you don't have to fear any kind of consequences for pointing them out, then having a good rant in a retroperspective is therapeutic, fun.
You even just considering this to be extracurricular work, already seems indicative of some problem with management to me...
This “entrepreneurial mindset” is what’s making it so hard to adjust to my new role. Recently took a job that’s new to me but since I always feel responsible and will try to fix everything, I’m having a lot of trouble staying in my lane. I need to keep reminding myself, just because I can do something, doesn’t make it my responsibility, nor do I deserve the blame if I don’t swoop in to fix it.
Having clear and healthy boundaries is incredibly important here. Otherwise you're doing multiples of extra work for the same money. If they want more from you, they should also expect to pay more for you
100% agreed. It’s mostly my own brain I’m fighting though, I came from a very toxic environment and am having a hard time adjusting to life that isn’t spent under a bus.
We're in the same boat. Hope it all works out for you. You got this
The moment i’m told that i’m responsible for the success of the company as a whole, i’m asking to be promoted to CEO. I’m doing my job, as hired for. No more, no less
You've just described my 50 years in the workforce, jumping from job to job, only just barely anything resembling an actual career.
Not to mention, in many cases, the CEO is also the CEO of something else, and is on the board of a third and fourth entity (or something like that).
How about we apply the same standard to CEOs that the rest of us fucking peons have to abide by? Because I can sure as shit focus on two jobs better than my CEO can focus on 4+ jobs, and I’ve got ADHD.
When my company introduced the concept of "Agile Metrics" I knew the shit went off the rails.