No, it sounds like you have worked out a good process as opposed to obsessing over tools.
To expand, when I teach people productivity, I keep it simple. I am familiar with both GTD for tasks and BASB/PARA for knowledge. Both approaches boil down in to having a central location to put stuff, organizing stuff around based on how immediate it is, and then having a regular review process to trim excess.
It's very similar to scrum. Dump everything into the backlog, organize it around what's going to be the most actionable, and then periodically trim/refine it.
It's not so much the MBA itself as it is what it represents. An MBA refers to an individual who is a general manager and typically come from sales or finance organization. They generally aren't concerned too much with research and development except they view them as cost centers to be optimized. They tend to be hyperfocused on the bottom line and will do anything needed to maximize profits, even at the expense of the product.
> If "scrum" is being followed properly, there's somebody listening who's actually recording what you said you were going to do yesterday and compare it to what you say you did yesterday and call out any discrepancies.
Seems to me that if you can't justify why not keeping your stated commitments was in the interest of the team and the company, then the issue is with your communication and not the process itself.
Exactly. And if somebody wants to complain about a process methodology not working because management at their company is stupid or a bunch of assholes: nothing fixes that.
90% of the time the cure for needing to do "undercover" work is explaining that it is needed to accomplish what the company expects to get out of a task. It often happens that incorrect assumptions get embedded in a plan, and an engineer is asked to do X on the assumption that doing X will also accomplish Z, and they think, "Ugh, they want me to do X but they won't give me time to do Y and Z, what the fuck do I do, Z isn't going to get done and then it will be my fault because I was tasked to do X and they think that's the same thing." Just communicate: "I think what is expected is that if we do X then Z will also be accomplished. In this case, doing X won't accomplish Z. We will also need to do Y and Z, which is additional work."
Then if they say, "Just do X," you don't have to fret about Y and Z, because you have set expectations appropriately. In a dysfunctional environment, where the scrum master or project manager is mechanically executing a process without knowing what any of it means, you may need to escalate or reach out beyond the team to find somebody who appreciates your warning that X will not accomplish Z.
Of course there may be no such person, but in that case, no process will save you.
I've even seen this used effectively to talk about technical debt. "Look, I think the assumption in management is that we're making progress on moving away from the legacy services and deprecating our old auth solution, but in fact, if we do this we will be making ourselves even more dependent on the legacy services, and we'll be adding new public APIs that can't be properly secured. I just want to be sure that [manager's name] is aware that that is how we're shaving a month off this plan." Needle scratch, management wasn't aware that there was any downside to the expedited plan that project management had squeezed out of the engineers, because project management did not understand the language of technical debt. It was all engineer blah blah to them, and it didn't occur to them that management needed to hear it.
Very much this. I find it necessary to make even the most simple and obvious connections explicit in group contexts. This is even more useful when dealing with people who are further away from the problem, or aren't focused on the issue at the level of detail of the people in the trenches. I'm not sure I can tally the number of hours that I spent reminding people at the C-level that, while all the work being done related to removing dependencies on system Foo was useful work, if they still wanted application Bar, then system Foo was never going to go away and they'd still be stuck with ongoing licensing costs for system Foo. And I wasn't even trying to convince them to stop spending time and effort, I just wanted to make sure that they knew the actual cost that application Bar was going to be solely responsible for, so they could plan for it, or do better cost/benefit analysis.
It's sort of crazy, I'd get an oh, yeah, every time I'm mention some of these things, but the facts would sort of slip out of their minds. I think they'd also get together with other managers who were confident that system Foo would be going away in a few quarters who either didn't know about application Bar, or didn't need to care about it, and their enthusiasm would cause the details to sort of get mentally overridden.
There is definitely an art to managing expectations and making sure that efforts and goals and scope are aligned.
> Very much this. I find it necessary to make even the most simple and obvious connections explicit in group contexts.
This took me years, and I mean many years, to fully understand. I would say things like, "If we're doing X, shouldn't we also do Y? I mean, we need Y for Z...." which is not nearly as effective as, "If we are doing X, I think the expectation is that we will accomplish Z, but doing X will not accomplish Z."
Both statements say that if Z is desired, X will not suffice. But the scrum masters and project managers hear the first as "the engineers want something," which primes them to ignore you, and the second as "management expects something," which primes them to pay attention and process what you're saying.
The simple solution, I think, is to give permission. Look for ways to optimize, simplify, refactor. Do it within story work when that makes sense. Don't "hide" it but if you have some time, do what you feel is important and interesting let the team know what you found out. Set the example. You shouldn't need a JIRA ticket to improve the system, do a quick spike or take a s** and on my team, you don't.
Yes, at some point, management can ask you to justify the work you did. They are paying you, after all. Scrum and agile was never about letting people do whatever they wanted do. Management has already had a role in making sure there were appropriate limits set. In other words, if you're responsible for building a word processor and end up building a video game, I think it's appropriate for someone to ask what are you doing?
The issue with the process itself is how that justification is provided. If you have data to justify something, then the process works fine. If you don't have that data and need to put in some work to obtain it, then you have to somehow justify that work, and the only way to do that is by "getting permission", i.e. buy-in from the rest of the team.
If you put it in context of the situation described in "You Don't Need Permission", doing the customer discovery cannot be justified except through buy-in from the CEO. If Suresh (from the story) has a daily standup with his CEO, then he can't do customer discovery because of the process.
I think I'd disagree here. This article is not about scrum but about trust. Here's a quote from the article:
>As head of sales and marketing, Suresh didn’t need his CEO to buy into the process or give his permission to start the discovery process. He was in charge.
Suresh is a VP of marketing. It's his job to develop a plan, get buy-in, and execute on it. If the CEO is standing in the way, then all this boils down to is that the CEO is micromanaging his VPs. No process can solve for that.
The article is not about scrum. This particular thread of discussion is about scrum, because that's what the comment that started it was about, and also your comment that I replied to.
I was merely framing the discussion in terms of what is written in the article, to illustrate what the problem with scrum (or capital-A agile in general) is.
You are now replying to my specific example, instead of my argument about the problems with scrum.
Yes, because context matters. If you want me to respond to agile, this is why you don’t have management at standup. To prevent micromanagement. My whole point is that there’s nothing inherently wrong (or right) with agile. It’s a process. The success of it depends partly on the people involved. One principle of agile is the right people on the right team.
This kind of reply makes discussions about agile very frustrating for me. Not only does it conflate agile software development, as a set of practices, with the myriad of processes and practices like scrum, but it also deflects perfectly valid criticisms with insinuation that "you're doing it wrong".
Most people would never think of either pretending that the waterfall model is without problems, nor that it can never be successfully applied to any project. Why, then, is it not acceptable to admit that scrum does, indeed, have limitations that stem from the way it reduces the autonomy of the individual team members?
I'm not sure where "the right people on the right team" comes from -- it's certainly not in the agile manifesto -- but it's just the right grade of vague to be less than useful in practice. It's like saying that every problem can be solved in only two steps: 1) determine what you have to do, and 2) do it.
I don't see any reason for denying that scrum, in its most widely-practiced form, complicates or even discourages certain tasks and behaviors that can be beneficial under correct circumstances. It shouldn't be controversial.
Yes, scrum limits individual autonomy. An effective team that is working together is far more productive than an individual. As a manager/director/executive, I'm far more interested in optimizing and rewarding one of my team's performance than any individual on the team. That's what I mean by "right team right people". I would rather get rid of the 10x developer who is unable to work and communicate with others and instead put a 1x developer who is capable of improving his team. That is what I see as the divide here. Developers are focused on their individual performance whereas I am focused on the whole team.
I think it’s less that and more that Microsoft is leveraging Redhat’s focus on Java. They have built a good editor and plug-in environment, then engage organizations stronger in other tech and have them build support.
Conservative means what it has always meant. The political belief that the law should bind outsiders but not protect them and that it should protect insiders but not bind them.
That's not what conservative means in my country, and frankly without a prefix it's indecipherable. If someone at the pub here says "I'm a conservative", you can actually infer nothing from that statement.
In most cases, you'd probably be correct in thinking that the person would be more inclined to preserve the status quo than changing it too quickly, for fear of unforeseen consequences.
Also, a simple Google search and 30-second skim of Wikipedia throws a wrench in your assertion.
> In most cases, you'd probably be correct in thinking that the person would be more inclined to preserve the status quo than changing it too quickly, for fear of unforeseen consequences.
This does not encompass reactionary conservatives that have become incredibly prominent as a political group in the United States, to the point of completely taking over one of the two political parties.
Correct, the Democrats are a weak willed party of centrists more concerned with maintaining the status quo as opposed to implementing progressive legislation that will help people. The GOP has become a cult of personality.
Neither party right now is a centrist party. They both realized that the median voter was disengaged, so they began to appeal to extremes as a way to motivate constituents to donate and vote.
From Merriam-Webster: "a situation in which a public figure (such as a political leader) is deliberately presented to the people of a country as a great person who should be admired and loved". Wikipedia mentions the use of mass media, propaganda, spectacle, etc. "to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise". I see nothing there about splitting the party and revenge. Remember these?
While I agree he's far from perfect (at the very least he sanctioned a couple extrajudicial executions and a coup in my home country) he seems to be a loving husband and father, can complete sentences and expose coherent reasoning. He clearly shows signs of a very superior intelligence, never declared bankruptcy (and never bankrupted a casino!) or defrauded investors, nor cheated on every single wife he had (he's still on his first one and she is a keeper).
Maybe. OTOH, a politician can be a huge influence for good. Kennedy's "We chose the Moon" speech influenced generations of engineers and scientists all over the world. JFK was not a good role model and, yet, he managed to bring out the best in a whole lot of people.
Humans are flawed - we can't escape that. Every human has a dark side but, it seems, some humans have a very large one.
By supporting free speech I support the right for us to say what we will without fear of retribution from the government. By supporting freedom of association I support that company’s can ban you for saying things they don’t agree with. Aren’t Gab and Parker right wing libertarian free market success stories? People found Twitter didn’t agree with their views so they founded a competitor.
> By supporting freedom of association I support that company’s can ban you for saying things they don’t agree with
The US already limit companies "Right of Association" by virtue of things like Providers of Last Resort (that's the extent of my knowledge on this topic in the context of America) so it's not an alien concept.
Do you feel that the electricity company should be able to cut off your power supply because you made a blog post they don't agree with? How about your mobile phone provider? And if not, why are online services treated any differently?
I presented an example along those lines, but more apt. I noticed you didn’t explain why you thought it was less applicable. And yes, the internet service provider should not be able to monitor your communication and selectively block it.
But why do should people be forced to associate with neonazis against their will? Expressing neonazi and white nationalist propaganda does not make one a a protected class so businesses are free to refuse to provide them service. Does McDonald’s have the right to refuse service to cater a klan rally?
> I noticed you didn’t explain why you thought it was less applicable.
I'm not actually sure where I stand on the issue in it's totality, I try to prevent myself from giving a knee-jerk response simply because the example being used is emotionally inflammatory. I do feel it's more a gradient than a binary issue though.
Edit: Upon re-reading, I misinterpreted this question sorry. The example you supplied might be as apt, but it's just one end of the spectrum. I also can't help but feel that it's like comparing my local Cafe (Switch Cafe in New Brighton, if you're interested) to McDonalds and calling it a free-market success story.
> But why do should people be forced to associate with neonazis against their will?
Why should a company - which is not a person, and something I think is being overlooked in this discussion - be forced to associate with anyone against their will? As I previously mentioned, there are several industries that can't refuse their service and there are several classes to which no industry may refuse their service. If we are looking for justification, I suggest we use the same logic applied in those cases.
> Does McDonald’s have the right to refuse service to cater a klan rally?
Obviously. I'm not sure where this is leading though, so I'll wait before commenting further.
Not an argument I want to have but I feel compelled to express.
While the ideology is terrible, hateful, close minded, harmful, etc, we tolerate their right to speech because no one knows when you might be the next “Neo Nazi”. A flick of the switch politically, and TPTB might find that LGBT speech is hateful. Perhaps people new to the tech industry don’t remember a time when being a computer nerd was anti-social, and clashed with the norms of society. Sure there are consequences to this ideology. People can get hurt and people’s lives can be impacted. But that is the price to live in a free society. Speaking to your last question, I think McDonalds should absolutely have the right to refuse service to a Klan member. But if I was in charge of McDonalds I would serve them. Because IMHO the outcome of a society where speech is no longer free, either by corporate cancel culture or government regulation, is not a society I want to live in.
Slippery slopes for everyone one. And a ceo that thinks catering klan rallies makes good business would soon find it their only business. Oh wait that’s what gab and Parler is doing!
And that “perhaps people new to...etc” is a nice backhanded appeal to authority and it falls flat.
Edit: hacker news has rigorously enforced comment guidelines, why is that okay? Why is it not bad per what you say:
> “ Because IMHO the outcome of a society where speech is no longer free, either by corporate cancel culture or government regulation, is not a society I want to live in.”
I don’t disagree with comment guidelines. Their platform, their rules. But my point is if it was my platform, I wouldn’t moderate it any more than the law requires: Imminent threats of violence, illegal pornography, libel, etc. I guess I would probably go beyond and ask people not to Dox others, and ask others not to bully or disparage one another. I find it no different from two people discussing communism in a private bar or restaurant, provided they are not harassing other customers
Ultimately, as a business owner, it’s not my (our?) job to direct culture. In fact it is kind of disturbing someone with enough money could change society to their whims. I’m here to create value for myself and the people around me. Political crusades are best left outside the professional/corporate environment.
Value isn't just a one dimensional thing where some business endeavours create less value or more value. There are different kinds of value that have different utility in different contexts.
Once you have that epiphany you can see that creating value for yourself and the people around you is a form of directing culture and vice-versa.
What if other people exploit your platform in order to direct culture, though? If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis, presumably because their passionate discussions drove away anyone who overheard them, then any action you take to promote your bar is effectively promoting that ideology and directing culture in a rather unsavory direction. What do you do then?
You don't need to actually own a platform to leverage it for your side in a culture war, you only need to know how to exploit it. If you want your platform to be neutral, you need to monitor and moderate it carefully: if you don't choose what culture permeates your platform, others will be glad to choose for you, and I think it's foolish to think it'll be any better.
> If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis
It could also mean that nazis like your bar.
I've seen this argument get politicized too much to the point of it being emotional. Like your nazi reference.
Social platforms should be moderated according to law. Whatever users legally & lawfully discuss in your platforms should not restricted. And this kind of applying pressure towards platforms worries me. They are merely tools. Let the law deal with this issue and leave free speech alone.
The problem is that big tech and social media companies don’t have competition. They are either monopolistic/oligopolistic or are shielded from new competition due to network effects protecting incumbents. They’re also immense in power and scope and influence.
They’re pseudo governments in that their actions (like censorship) are for all practical purposes, as impactful as an actual government. They’re necessary to our lives and are also utilities in that sense. And so they should be regulated and required to support everyone who doesn’t explicitly break the law, like a public agency.
If you're planning on a violent assault on others, all those protections disappear. Free speech has well established limitations that are pretty easy to understand.
You keep trying to associate Parler and Gab as supporters of free speech. Parler was shut down because it refused to moderate content that incited violence. Gab's browser extension Dissenter was removed from Google and Firefox for the same reason: unmoderated content that often featured calls to violence.
These platforms are being used by white nationalists and other extremists to normalize their hateful ideology and encourage violence against anyone with different gender orientations, nationality, ethnicity, or religious beliefs.
Gab and Parler have zero interest in free speech as a human right. They want unlimited free speech for acceptable groups (mostly white straight Christians) and no rights for anyone else.
Users on those platforms have posted their intent to hurt and kill others, that content was never moderated, and those users carried out acts of violence. Companies who don't want to be associated with that have disconnected their services ahead of the inevitable legal action to shut the services down.
Literally no one in the US has had their electricity or phone cut off because of a "disagreeable blog post." It's a ridiculous example to bring up in the sea of information about what's going on in those forums.
People have felt so unheard they've taken to the streets in violence. We've seen riots all through the last year up to and including the incident on Jan 6. When people feel unheard it reliably leads to violence. That is why, when it comes to my eyes and dollars, I support platforms that support free speech. In different times I might lean towards freedom of association.
Quite the contrary. If anything, the coverage did not show the full story. The majority of these people were out for blood. They erected hanging stations. The fought with the police. This was no demonstration. These people were to overturn the election and hurt or kill anyone who got in their way. Free speech decidedly does not protect this.
Everything said by the person you replied to is the truth, not hyperbole. Just because the mob and their fatal invasion of the nation's capitol was not successful does not mean that their motives were not anti-democratic.
Why are you apologizing for the insurrection's actions?
Parler was created in response to Twitter banning several far right personalities. People are more than capable of overcoming the big tech companies and finding ways to get their message out. Maybe the leader of a nation shouldn’t continually question an election and encourage his supporters to commit insurrection?
To expand, when I teach people productivity, I keep it simple. I am familiar with both GTD for tasks and BASB/PARA for knowledge. Both approaches boil down in to having a central location to put stuff, organizing stuff around based on how immediate it is, and then having a regular review process to trim excess.
It's very similar to scrum. Dump everything into the backlog, organize it around what's going to be the most actionable, and then periodically trim/refine it.