I’ve met this bird. It only prioritizes issues as urgent; when interacted with, it’ll say “yes, this is part of MVP”
I’ll kill you , you stupid bird!
If everything is high priority, nothing is high priority!
I had a list of 30 items I had to prioritize with clients the other day. We ended up with about two dozen Priority 1s and the rest were 2s.
So I had to go back and say, “let’s prioritize the 1s” and at least got them to agree to 1.A, 1.B, and 1.C.
This is why I really don’t think absolute priority values work. I much prefer relative priority, i.e. dragging cards into an order.
Of course, the challenge with that is in clarifying that it’s not a strict order in which tasks will be tackled.
You are a wizard.
I have had multiple managers who are incapable of understanding this.
Could be worse, mine have started saying “the MVP must be feature complete and 100% bug free” but there’s a 0% chance there’s enough budget for that.
And what sort of an MVP is feature-complete and completely bugless?
Wayne Gretzky? 🤷
Minimum Viable Player
I can deliver completely bugless. The secret is code that doesn’t do anything, acts the same as code that doesn’t exist.
A good project manager can make all the difference. I’ve worked with shitty ones and great ones. Great ones are on top of the project, fielding questions and wrangling together key players. Shit ones don’t do any of that then get surprised on their own call when they are behind schedule.
The more I learn about project managers the more I realize I am a project manager in a factory. Just a criminally underpaid project manager…
We don’t have titles here because god forbid anyone discover what their value actually is.
Then you ask a PM for specs before you start, or at least a brief with what needs to be done, and maybe a rough planning based on estimates and not what the customer said what are the deadlines, and they get really offended.
what does “get surprised on their own call” mean?
They are usually responsible for planning, generating, and running regular project team meetings. So they get people together but sometimes have done no work since the last meeting they held, so when someone has a reasonable issue that doesn’t meet with the pre done schedule 5 years ago when the project was first instigated, they have super Pikachu face and get mad at the actual doers because they don’t get to just report “on schedule” to their bosses. They could be called the landlords ofthe project based on the sentiment of the greater Lemmy community.
I’ve worked with the worst project managers. Sit in a meeting for an hour completely silent, then at the end ask questions that were already answered. I’d love that job. That or scrum master. Our scrum master is fucking useless. I think if he doesn’t move stories around swim lanes he will explode.
When I first started applying for IT jobs back in the day I would see “Scrum Master” jobs get posted a lot and I would think to myself “why the fuck do they need to hire a rugby player” before I knew what a scrum master actually did.
I once met one of those.
Just the type @Cold_Brew_Enema is talking about. Self-important douche who literally tried holding presentation on what scum master does. On a recreational evening. And we had no choice but sit there and listen because the space we were spending the evening in was the conferencerooms/sauna of their company. Then he had a brilliant idea of making people do airplanes as a “social activity.” Ugh. The average age in that room was past 30.
And yes I’m aware I wrote “scum”, it was on purpose. It was either that or “cum”, but I don’t want to slut-shame anyone and imagine any potential cum masters out there being more pleasant to be around than him.
I think a rugby player would be more useful in some situations
Strong terry tate vibes
On the other hand: I’ve worked with a great PO. Kept us shielded from all the business and politics bullshit, but also informed us about everything relevant, made priorities as clear as he could, trusted in our judgement, was open to ideas and improvements and also tried to push them with the higher ups.
I miss him.
Wow that sounds nice lol
It absolutely was.
They’re rare but they do exist. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with a great project manager, that project was actually fun to work on and far less stressful (even though it was a fairly critical piece of infrastructure required to keep our banking license, so there was some sense of urgency).
I ended up leaving that company for other reasons but I learned a lot from her about what makes a project run smoothly.
I can also count on 3 fingers how many great business analysts and security people I’ve worked with
Oh god that reminds me of an old boss. I’m the type to sit in meetings and listen. Taking in everything and asking few questions/making few statements. I got pulled aside one afternoon and asked, “Why aren’t you participating in the meetings? You hardly speak up and sit there looking bored.” So after a few minutes of this talk I absolutely began asking the actual hard questions that I used to water down while putting in applications on the side.
Got pulled into a meeting a couple months (and several interviews) later on some email discussion I forwarded as way of explanation for a situation I was loosely involved with. The other email participant and I had a very strong relationship and because of that some professionalism fell off. Nothing truly informal. More khakis than dress pants if you will. Anyway, they tried slapping me with the old dreaded formal warning not over the situation, over “my tone used with another professional”, so I pulled out the undated and unsigned notice I had been carrying around since that initial talk.
Anyway, story went on longer than expected. Point is, sometimes you’re fucked either way.
I want the title of scrum master just because it sounds gross. Keep your dirty hands off my scrum!
She scrum on my master until I… agile???
I have been a scrum master for a couple of years. If you can facilitate, teach some scrum basics, and have some ability to get good work from people it’s the easiest job there is
Unfortunately my “train” downsized and my team was dissolved (the team was 80% contract staff in a government IT area, and we had to lose all the contract people) and I’ve been moved to a product owner role
PO isn’t going to be nearly as easy, but it has a good chance of being more fun
If you’re competent, a SM is invaluable, however it’s one of the easiest to replace role. As an example, almost all of the engineers in my division has a PSM I certification. So all the SM do is just facilitate meetings. When we started we have around 5 SMs but currently only have 1 because all of the SMs are redundant since the team already know how scrum works.
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That’s the life of a bean for ya
Just wait until they get a turkey stuck on their head.
And yet he is better then most
Better and most? Wow. But most only later? Huh.
Edit: not meant to be toxic… Guess the inflections weren’t conveyed well through text.
This is more toxic then funny.
I’m glad it was funny eventually at least 😆
Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one…
Considering what a fucking tragicomedy life on Earth has turned into, I think doing both – possibly at the same time – is a valid reaction
80% of project managers are useless. But if you find a good one, they are worth their weight in gold.
Is there much difference between sitting or shitting on a blocking issue apart from the H?
did he also learn to complain about the quality of your work despite clearly being incapable (or unwilling) of doing it better himself?
He didnt hire himself, he hired you…
well, my shit works and i deliver on time. he has no reason to complain.
When I see posts like this I just remember those old crotchety engineers who would gripe about “scrum bad”, then would absolutely refuse to participate in collaborative planning activities with their fellow teammates. They tended to be the primary source of bad vibes and work breakdowns
Found the project manager
They’ll be all replaced by simple AIs
Yeah scrums are great, and just somehow every single company that has them is doing them wrong, it is everyone else’s fault.
So we agree that copy pasting team culture, rather than giving the actual humans agency over the way that they organize themselves, is bad? Scrum is the name of a meeting, not one specific thing, it was just an example
