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Benjamin Follis for Uclusion

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Development Collaboration is Complete Bullshit

  • Developers are not ok with spending hours talking about out what to do next week
  • Daily standups are rarely actually useful
  • Backlogs are where things go to do die
  • Notifications and "responsiveness" are the modern equivalent to a dog leash
  • Video meetings with children running around are comically painful
  • Three people can agree on a meeting time, if two of them are dead
  • We're still dealing with "core hours" when nobody's life is that simple
  • Only estimating ahead of time doesn't even work for bathroom remodeling
  • Project management tools give managers what they want but not what they need
  • Engineers are judged on adherence to process instead of outcomes

What’s needed is a collaboration style that gives developers a seat at the table, without gluing them to their chair.

Top comments (5)

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insanenaman profile image
Naman Gupta

Something unique points here. Sometimes even I also find it difficult to talk about time needed to implement certain feature or resolve a bug because you never know how bad the problem is. πŸ˜‚

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bfuculsion profile image
Benjamin Follis

I find that's usually the case for all but the simplest features or bug. That's why there's so many "spike stories" before actual work gets going. All that's just extra work to keep bookeeping which is better served by asking the question "How much time is this worth to you" to the stakeholders.

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csgeek profile image
csgeek

I think you might be intermixing bad management with processes. There's nothing wrong with Spikes and Standups when done correctly.

I do want to sync up with my team and spend 15 minutes to see where everyone is at. I do not want to spend an hour every day going in circles about things that are no relevant that should be taken offline.

I find Spikes to be very useful, we're exploring a new technology you want to do a spike and maybe a POC before jumping in head first.

Just my 2 cents.

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bfuculsion profile image
Benjamin Follis

I don't have a problem with spikes in the agile process, its that the agile process is just using them as an accounting trick. The majority of the time, you can't figure out how deep you are, before trying to do it. The spike is just a "lets implement it and call it reasearch" at that point.

Standups are a waste of time. Seeing where every one is at once a day isn't super useful. Things rarely go to plan, and I wan't to know what the status of the story is, when I need to know it. The bad management of letting it drag on for an hour just increases the pain. Also I've YET to find a team that implements standups properly, probably because the definition of what a "proper" standup is fluid.

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chimchim2 profile image
Chim

πŸ™ Serious vibes emitting from this post. Some much truth in so few bullets. Keep doing God's work.