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Discussion on: Collaboration and Parallelization

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Michael Glass

One problem the backlog solves is, "how do I solve an isolated problem without a lot of context".

Is that really what we want? "Nail this in with the hammer" is a task I could do without context. But it leaves a lot of room for me to not understand the larger context: "this piece is structurally integral.", "behind this wall is a tank full of poison gas so make sure to use the exact nail we specified in the spec", etc. (p.s. supervillain laid construction business is booming over here).

My main reason for preferring collaboration/limiting parallelization is it helps force shared understanding of the underlying problem. From a business perspective: we work faster by giving everyone the context to know when to take a shortcut ("those prisoners have already been turned into zombies, we don't need to prepare breakfast"), or when to re-inforce something. From a personal perspective: I care when I am more than a hammer-swinger / code monkey. It's hard for me to connect a task with a vision. It's easier if, rather than solving a bucket of tasks, we're actually solving a problem. That needs a lot of context, alignment, etc that the backlog obviates.