I think I'm in over my head on a problem I have the most knowledge about so I can't really pass it off to anyone. I'm trying to containerize this really specific environment for software that has like 18 bajillion dependencies, PLUS needs to see a lot of host devices and use a lot of resources from the host, it's super hacky and a dumb problem because this isn't how containers should be used at all IMO. We're just trying to make it easier to package these dependencies into one bundle and ship it. It also relies on alpha-level code from a major hardware company who is probably really good at writing hardware level code but their installation and setup scripts are a complete and total disaster. Can't debug anything there either except dive into their scripts and hack them myself or learn all their weird stupid dependencies and side effects.

But I can't get it to work and getting a lot of weird errors from software I don't know the inner workings of and I can't debug so I am going to probably have to just brute force trial and error until something works which is miserable.

Consulting with hardware vendor probably your best option. My experience has been that they're fine with answering questions about their products. You might describe what you are trying to do and hopefully get some useful feedback.

Mostly dealing with their sales people who don’t even know how to work the ccommand line. Like they don’t even know how to access it. That’s actually why I am containerizing this whole thing, so they can run a demo by clicking a few buttons no matter what machine they’re on.

Their engineers are kind of *******s too. Not Actually, huge *******s from the few exchanges i’ve had from them, not super helpful either. But they’re paying us pretty well for what we’ve delivered so far.

Funny example of an ******* exchange - they were supposed to ship us two servers in november. We just got one a few weeks ago. We didnt want them to take forever to ship the second so we just said ship the components and we’ll put it together.

They literally ship raw components, like **** was needing thermal paste and ****. Wrong power supply. I email the guy saying they sent the wrong power supply, he comes back with “who ever heard of a transformer...?”

It was pretty fun putting together the machine though, so joke’s on them. The funny thing is we’re shipping it back to them so it’s THEIR machines, and they’re being so annoying about it.

/rant

You have a very weird job - part project manager, part computer installer, part programmer, part nanny or something.

I'm starting to think every job is dysfunctional. It's only in retrospect that I am proud of what we accomplished in spite of the dysfunction and convince myself it was a good job.

I think a lot of it has been we’ve recently lost a huge chunk of what was already a very small company and I’ve kind of just taken on any and all work that comes my way, if i can do it.

A few people we lost were basically dead weight but then we lost a whole team for a multi-year long project and it’s been kind of all hands on deck every single week since then.

What’s nice now is I have real deadlines to work with so I can measure progress a lot better. I’m on pace to finish two projects ahead of schedule which im pretty sure has never happened there.

My job was fairly functional but they recently brought in a bunch of consultants to force us to do scrum a certain way. Here's the thing, scrum is the dumbest thing ever. Just completely horrible and at odds with delivering due to an unreal amount of arbitrary rules.

Yeah, if they can’t get dev buy in on Agile it isn’t going to be a very successful...

I've mentioned a "programmer" who worked with me back when I was first a programmer around 2000. He literally wrote one line of code a week, with help, but managed to have a good reputation outside our team. I googled him and now he's a "Certified Scrum Master".

What are the rules at your place? How long are your sprints? I have been at a place where seemingly a lot of unnecessary overhead was the norm for developers. Scrum shouldn’t a painful experience. Should be about resolving blocking issues basically and that can have a lot value FWIW.

I miss agile/scrum. We have jira tickets now but they're way too broad. We have one meeting a week and no idea what timeline we're expected to deliver what - other than this project is "top priority".

2 week sprints. Cards must deliver business value but they also can't span more than a sprint and thus can't be more than 8 pts. This causes issues when there is dependent work.

Can't start cards that are dependent on other cards even if the work can be done concurrently .

If cards carry its like the worst thing ever, even if the card is 99% done and was a ton of work.

If a card carries its points go on the next sprint. Team is not allowed to take on more than 25 points. So carry an 8pt card and a 5pt card that are done other than an approval or some b.s. process documentation step and now you have 5 devs with 12 pts.

Can't take on a new card in the sprint. So even if I finish my card in 3 days nope. And obv there are times you can work on multiple cards such as waiting for approval or a dependency.

In those situations we are told to collaborate on other cards that other devs are working on. This sounds great in theory but it really doesn't work. Unless a dev is stuck, there really is no benefit to pairing.

So we are told to help QA or search for bugs or look at logs for errors or do other paperwork bs. Ofc if we find a bug we can't fix it since it was not part of the sprint.

It is insanely frustrating to have work sitting there that I am able do and not be allowed to do it bc of arbitrary rules.

This is new though. Hopefully the program comes to senses. This going to just kill the speed of adding features and functionality.

Some of those things are normal, but not being able to grab a new card sounds really bad.

The whole "1 card in progress at a time" thing drives me nuts as well since a lot of times you are waiting on someone else for something

Yeah, not picking up extra cards means you can never increase your velocity or have stretch goals.

I've never worked at anything close to the nazi scrum like Victor describes. That sounds horrible.

To me the essentials are just 1) daily standups, 2) clearly-defined testable tasks, and 3) a sprint planning meeting at the beginning of each to hash out #2 and who's working on what.

After that it's diminishing returns imo.

Also In Victor's shoes I would just work on tasks on my local and then magically get them done when I could grab the card. If anyone questioned me I'd tell them exactly what I did and let the chips fall where they may.

Suzzer, ours used to be like that. It has gradually moved to this dystopia and a lot of it has to do with pointing.

Also, yes I am doing some work on the unassigned cards that are sitting there .

My old job hired a bunch of SAFe consultants and went all in with it, it was miserable. Not quite as bad as what Victor is describing but close.

This sounds like "scrum for beancounters"

You’re 100% right suzzer

As a lead isn't it your job to define these tasks and set timelines based on expected progress?

@victor

Here's a list of takeaways from this book Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business

Quote:

Takeaways

❖ Kanban delivers all aspects of the Recipe for Success.

❖ The Recipe for Success explains why Kanban has value.

❖ Poor quality can represent the largest waste in software development.

❖ Reducing work-in-progress improves quality.

❖ Improved quality improves trust with downstream partners such as operations.

❖ Releasing frequently improves trust with upstream partners such as marketing.

❖ Demand can be balanced against throughput with a pull system.

❖ Pull systems expose the bottlenecks and create slack in non-bottlenecks.

❖ Good quality prioritization maximizes the value delivered by a well-functioning software development value chain.

❖ Prioritization is of little value without good initial quality and predictability of delivery.

❖ Making changes to reduce variability requires slack.

❖ Reducing variability reduces the need for slack.

❖ Reducing variability enables a resource balancing (and, potentially, a reduction in headcount).

❖ Reducing variability reduces resource requirements.

❖ Reducing variability allows reduced kanban tokens, less WIP, and results in reduced average lead time.

❖ Slack enables improvement opportunities.

I suspect that a lot of this is what is driving the changes in your process. Regarding increasing velocity, I think it is fair to state that the author of this book would say that identifying and eliminating bottlenecks is the key. Seems like these operative principles at least are being adopted where you work:

❖ Pull systems expose the bottlenecks and create slack in non-bottlenecks
❖ Making changes to reduce variability requires slack.
❖ Reducing variability reduces the need for slack.

Maybe? But am I a lead? It's kind of unclear except when I get blamed when something goes wrong. Until a few weeks ago that was definitely my boss' role. Now it's *probably* my role? Except when she wants to get involved again.

So the other devs seem to look at is as basically a partnership with me, but ultimately they report to my boss, not me, and can work on things they way they see fit and in what order they want.

They have a prototype to work off of and while they'll listen to me I think ultimately they feel the prototype is boss. Even though it doesn't cover detailed requirements like how to handle and display certain errors, which errors to worry about, how to handle real time form validation, etc. Also stuff that my boss isn't really interested in, but still has to work.

And there's been some necessary back and forth with the prototyper which has caused some moderate scope creep, but made the first pass of this app a lot better. However since we have no real timelines or detailed tasks - there's no way to show the effect the scope creep. And since we spent 3 months dicking around with a completely useless contractor, we now have no extra wiggle room and people are getting pissy about why we haven't delivered anything.

I'm also the only one who actually drags the jira tickets from backlog, to development, to feedback. Do I want to make a big stink about this and either get my boss to talk to them over it, or try to cajole them to do it? Not really. So if I think something's done I just drag the task over.

My boss tells me to make jira tasks so I do. It's never been 100% clear if I can assign the jira tasks to devs but that seems like what she wants me to do. Could I ask her to clear this up? Yes. But something in my spidey sense just tells me that's a conversation I don't really want to have, as the answer I get could hamper me from my ultimate goal of just trying to deliver the project. Or it turns into some version of me sounding like Cartman yelling "Respect Mah Authoratah!"

And there's a fun culture of working on something for 3 days then checking it in w/o any sign off. So now for me to go back and say it's not right - I'm the one reopening some kind of issue that a dev thought they were done with.

Btw we're pretty much a 3-person team right now and all of the above is basically from having to work with the CSS person - who's the kind who needs every single tiny detailed requirement spelled out for her - but is clearly not on board with me being the one to spell these out.

For example - the prototype shows a username not found error and password invalid error at the same time. Well that's what she programmed. I have to explain to her those are two different errors for different cases, and they don't make sense together. For which I basically get the passive aggressive blank stare and who know when or if she's going to change it to the behavior that I want.

So am I the lead or not? If the boss asks her she'll probably say she's getting to it. But if not I could easily see me not being able to get her to change it w/o some kind of rank pulling pain. I could always change it myself. But for all I know she's already changed it and just not checked it in yet. Also she doesn't really get git and is clearly annoyed at me for trying to get her to use it in a way that doesn't cause conflicts. So if I break her **** and cause conflicts - it will be a blast.

I'm hoping when the main react dev gets back from vacation next week things will go better.

FYI it's really common to display something like username or password invalid to avoid letting attackers know they've found a valid username

Then you say something generic. You don't say "Username Not Found" and "Password Invalid" at the same time.

I'm aware of not letting attackers fish before the found a valid username. But we're just trying to crawl at this point. If no one brings that up I'm not going to.

And thus tech debt was born...