me irl
I once had a customly designed project for an external client of a web-development company were I was technical lead and the sales guy who sold it to the customer without ever consulting us about it had the project management responsability.
On the very first day the guy got me, the junior developer and the designer together for the project launch meeting and started saying how we would have to work extra to make it fit his (ridiculously short) deadlines and I just said “No, it’s not at all possible to fullfill those deadlines so that’s not going to happen” and when he tried to argue with “what about the client” I replied that “You came up with those estimates and gave them to the client without even talking to us, the experts in that domain, so managing the fallout with the client from that is your problem not ours”.
I fondly remember all that because of the transition from downtrodden and unhappy to absolute happiness visible on the face of the junior developer when, after the sales guy / project manager gave us the “work extra hard” spiel I (as the tech lead) replied with “No, that’s not going to happen”.
(Ultimatelly the project took twice as long as the sales guy’s estimates)
The whole “putting the cart in front of the oxen” (as we say in my country) of this meme reminded me of that one (and that memory invariably puts a smile on my face).
> How I talk to girls.
By taping a piece of paper to the wall.
By writing on the Internet?
By taping a piece of paper to the wall and posting a photo of said paper on the internet.
My experience has been more like:
“We’ve scheduled the wedding. Not only have I not asked her out, but the [potential] bride is guaranteed to be completely turned off by the whole idea. I won’t know that because I’m not going to ask her opinion about anything until she ghosts me three weeks before the wedding.”
Isn’t this what Agile* is supposed to solve?
*The actual principles of Agile, not whatever bastardised version your team is doing!
agile is the communism of software developers
Propely done Agile is more to solve the “We have the general idea of what we need but will only know for sure the details of how it will work once the users see it and start playing around with it”.
You still need to upfront know that a wedding is actually needed, but have a process for figuring out and trying out the details of the various elements of it (say, as part of deciding what kind of food will there be for the reception, actually preparing and trying various options) before the whole things actually gets “delivered”.
Agile also works well for environments were software is developed to serve the kind of business which is are constantly changing (for example, certain areas of Finance) or is something totally new being created from the ground up (i.e. many if not most Startups) because the business itself is a sort of a neverending “we’ll figure out what we need and if it works well when we get there and try it out” which matches almost perfectly the fast and scope-limited definition->implementation->feedback cycles of the Agile software development process.
How many story points is it to get to 2nd base?
We’re saving ourselves for marriage, that’s not part of the MVP
In proper agile you don’t have end goal and date set, however management needs end goal and a date.
Doesn’t a definition of done count as a goal?
That’s just how you know when you’ve finished
My old manager sent out invitations to the bride‘s family before telling me I was the groom.
(he publicly announced the new product‘s price and release date before telling the dev team that there will be a new product)
I’ve never had a boss who didn’t do this. Promise, set timeline and price, get contracts signed, then come to the development team to ask whether it’s possible to do by Wednesday. Many years ago I had a boss who promised a major client that we’d provide an entire online advertising network to rival Google Ads, and gave us 4 days to design, develop and deliver it. Then when it wasn’t ready he threw one of the developers under the bus in a meeting with the customer. He actually used the words, “This is Dave’s fault.” Dave was professional and didn’t argue. Good look for a CEO. I’m sure he thought he had won. The project went nowhere because all the execs had different ideas about what it was supposed to do, and the dev team was oddly unmotivated to help them out.
Fucking 4 days.
Well, in Dave’s CEO’s defense, it was just Google Ads.
Just, you know, that thing that largely provides the income for a world top-ten company.
I bumped into the CEO again about 10 years later at a funeral. He was thoroughly obnoxious and spent the time making fun of the deceased (a colleague of ours) and taunting my friend about how many hours he had tricked him into working for free. Then he bragged about his current business and its success. Really one of the most awful people I’ve ever met.
That wasn’t the first deceased colleague of ours he had disrespected. We had a very skilled but very obedient guy working on our team - call him Jim - whose brother (also an colleague) was terminally ill in hospital. These brothers were good guys and popular with all their colleagues. One day Jim got the message that his brother had taken a turn for the worse and might not have much longer, so he asked his manager if he could take the afternoon off to visit his brother. Word came down from Mr. CEO: no, Jim was needed in the office so could not have the afternoon off. Being a loyal employee, Jim stayed. His brother died that evening and he didn’t get to say goodbye. I left the company soon after that.
Miserable as this all was, it was a good lesson in just how self-centred and self-important some people are. This CEO is now very wealthy and still goes through life convinced he’s a success and we’re all losers who don’t know how to do life like he does. He’ll probably never figure out the truth.
You didn’t just punch him in the mouth?
He’ll probably figure it out on his deathbed if you’re lucky
How many fully stacked devs does it take do scrum her to the altar?
Research projects:
“I’ve set the wedding date. I’m not sure they exist.”
The grant proposal:
“They definitely exist, and this marriage will change the world. The wedding must be funded now or else we risk someone else marrying them and getting all the credit for the wedding.”
Working for a global consulting firm I can agree.
