oh and dont get me started on "moving testing to the left".

which I actually agree with!

but the whole scrum thing has dev doing all the story cards, all the dev work, and now all testing.

Anyone else know of a more elegant way to run an array of promises in serial?

I guess there's nothing wrong with the above. But parallel is so beautiful it almost makes me want to cry.

Victor, we just started doing daily standups. Everyone on the team seems to love it actually.

There is definitely an agile sweetspot and I think we're on the opposite end than you.

If someone gave you their opinion on something that they had never seen work correctly and in previous conversations on the topic gave no indication of knowing very much about how much weight would you give that opinion?

Nope, the way your company is doing it is wrong.

I’m at work so I can’t do the rest of your points, but whatever you are doing isn’t agile, it isn’t following the agile manifesto, you shouldn’t confuse this with agile.

The problems you are having aren’t with agile they are with your management.

right! I loved it at first! then our company brought in this consulting team to show us how to do agile and scrum the right way and they brought all these rules and meeting and it just went to hell.

when we "self organized" and did the stuff that mattered to reach the ultimate goals it was amazing. I really liked it. you can find my posts itt defending it.

then it went to hell.

I have mentioned this before, but our company's agile/scrum methodology is being led by a consulting company that is highly regarded in the industry as a teacher of SCRUM. we are following their rules. and that is exactly what it is. a set of rules.

so when an industry leader of SCRUM is promoting the ideas I have described and setting these rules, then I feel pretty damn confident that I know what its about.

and I really think it goes back to my old colleague's saying about certain ppl creating work so that it seems like they are doing something. bc I got plenty of work I could do right now, but I am not allowed to do it bc I need to go thru all this scrum bs first. and that scrum bs exists so that managers can look like they are doing something and so that consulting firms can get paid big bucks to come in and muck everything up.

and in 5 years its gonna be something different and the same firms are gonna be promoting STRUM and getting paid.

when I could whip up some straight up CUSTOMER VALUE in like a week but bc of scrum its gonna take 6 months.

I got laid off today. I'm shocked but it's all good. I've had several people recruiting me over the last few months, so I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. 12 weeks of severance so I'm in no rush to get a job. I am looking forward to finishing up some of the side projects I got going over the next few weeks.

Our company went private a few months ago and they have to find $20 million a month in savings and I guess I was part of that. We also did a big re-org and my group didn't really line up anywhere on the new chart. Our group did POC's and prototypes for our partnership team. The partnership team merged into sales and we were left out in the cold like a red headed stepchild We also got a new CTO who didn't wan't any developers outside of engineering.

What's really stupid and perplexing is I was the sole developer of a new product that already has over $1 million in revenue lined up if we get it to work. We're already in beta and have 5 customers using it. I had maybe 1 week of work left to get it fully automated. I have no idea who they will get to work on it and finish it up. I know the product manager has to be livid right now.

Damn that sucks to get hit out of the blue like that. Sounds like you will be ok though.

I got laid off a couple years ago and it was such a punch in the gut. I hate being unemployed. It took like 3 days to just recover. So you have my sympathies.

12 weeks of severance and lots of prospects is good though. I had something similar to that and the way it worked out it was almost like they paid me to go find a better job, when I would never have bothered to do it on my own.

Good luck!

damn that sucks.

you know they are gonna be hitting you up for how to finish that project tho. obv they will be asking for your expertise or even for essentially free work. hope you tell them no way.

My previous employer brought in SAFe consultants. I lasted a couple months then found a new job. **** that noise.

Oh ya SAFE is our next step .

It's really just a gift.

thanks well named. I think this will work but I am still trying to wrap my head around it.

I could seriously go on an on.

but heres one of the worst things about scrum and agile. the idea that all members of the team can do all the work. well thats garbage. it should be.

the qa cant code, nor can the ba. but you know the dev can absentmindedly test some qa and can whip up some crappy story cards. so the work gets offloaded to the devs in an immense fashion.

but the dev likely doesnt give a sht about those nor has any training in it. but I still do it. and I do a crappy job at QA and BA bc I hate it and I got other stuff to do. and it sucks. and now theres less time to write code and figure some stuff out. so now we have worse code, and worse QA coverage, and worse story cards.

ofc devs dont really care about story cards bc I just go to the technical ppl (architect/lead) and ask them what they want. (oh the front calls this api and gets this response? oh the api gets called and responds like this?). no problem.

but that technical info is beyond the QA and BA so the def and architect (who cant really be arsed bc hes in front of like 4 other teams) so the dev is left to update the cards with all the technical info. and QA wants all the info bc they want to know the "risks"? which is really just them asking the dev what the risks are. so now the dev has to come up with complete list of the risks and then the QA just retests all the stuff the def already tested.

basically, fire the BAs, fire the QAs and triple my salary.

and as for the consultatnts that came up with this bs, firing is too good for them. sucha crock.

I think the true worst is the whole all or nothing of completing story points or objectives. like, we had a ton of objectives planned out and we missed them by a day. its the end of the world. you get NO POINTS and those cards get put into the next sprint, like a necklace of shame.

ok but we have these OBJECTIVES and if we havent hit them yet, team members with white space must help achieve them before moving to another thing. so you can have some stuff lined up and fully defined, but god forbid a free dev starts any of that up. no, they gotta look over my shoulder and "pair program" with me while I finish up this last bit.

I think that is a hudge issue. the managers who lead this and who promote (not that they really care bc they seem to be in it just for the grift) dont seem to realize that you cant just throw 3 devs into a file and triple the speed of implementation. it actually slows things down a ton.

ok Im done now. I mean, I could go on. Im not gonna. I might.

Meh, missed a bunch of posts so just deleting this.

Blacklab, agree that sucks.

I hope you don’t bust your ass finishing up your project. Be professional and all but you don’t owe them anything and shouldn’t sacrifice **** to get them out of their own problem.

FYI in my current iteration ive completely abandoned agile. Ive taken some things I like about it but have mostly concluded it’ll never, ever work here. Even if it could I’m not sure I’d buy in.

The studies on agile increasing productivity are strong - but i think it is possible, especially in a very small company, that it creates a lot of management and communication overhead that’s mostly completely unnecessary.

I have a project board with tasks. This gets sent out once a week (though it’s always viewable), sent out on mondays, and a review on fridays. It’s only been a a few weeks but it’s working very well so far compared to the half assed agile implementations weve tried.

I think the big difference in actual software project management and the thing that everyone is trying to avoid is letting the work dictate the schedule vs. letting the schedule drive the work. This is why it always devolves and breaks after enough time because management usually can't operate in that fashion.

In the long run it's probably best to ship fully working features when they are ready to be deployed than a bunch of half working features that will break in strange ways down the road. Short term time schedule pressures usually win out though.

Getting laid off sucks. Even when it's clearly not your fault it feels bad. Take a little time off between now and the next job if you can. Although I personally am really bad about this, I just fall from one job straight into another without a break.

Yeah should be fine. It was quite a shock as my boss and product manager have been telling the VP and president that I'm the one guy in Austin we can't lose as my projects are about to bring in millions in revenue. The PM told the president I'm probably the only guy at the company that had the combination of coding, ops and business knowledge to get this thing done.

When they told me I was getting laid off I assumed they'd want me for a couple of weeks to finish the project and tie my severance to it. But nope, got told you have one hour to get any personal stuff off your laptop and then all your accounts will be shut down, don't worry about turning anything over, we got it.

Later I did talk to my boss about finishing it up. If I come back it to finish it off I'm not doing it for less than $200 an hour.

ya this makes sense.

our design changes in the middle of a sprint like always. and then its like, well we cant change these story cards, and it makes no sens to finish them since they will just change, so wtf do we do?

like why cant we just actually be "agile" and do the work that needs done. nope. cant do it. story cards are rigid entities that can only be worked on when the product owner, and the lead dev, and the qa agrees. thats SCRUM.

oh ya and at the end of the sprint theres always a ton of anxiety about meeting the goals and getting the points. scrum master is the worst. ok guys lets look at the burn down chart and see how close we are. miss it by a day or 2 and its just zomg you FAILED. not in those words since everyone is really polite but thats what it is.

its just straight up bs the more I learn about it and do it. not quite sure how middle managers can actually sleep at night. at least I get to build stuff sometimes. their whole job is just to move deck chairs around so they can say they did it.

scrum is the downfall of america.

ya I dont think the company will reach out to you but some poor schmuck tasked with finishing your project likely will. he will be clueless and finally get up the nerve to reach out to you. you will feel sorry for the guy and proly want to help him since it wasnt his fault and he just got thrown into it. plus you know exactly what to do.

Ive seen this happen with ppl close to me who were laid off from jobs. is real shtty bc it aint that dudes fault and you know how to fix it easily so ya ugh. so maybe it wont.