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do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. and they'd transfer out of any group wh

do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. and they'd transfer out of any group where a manager tried to implement such a practice. if a software engineer is more than a couple years out of college, i don't think she/he should put up with it either.

humanrebar 10y ago
> do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. Most industries (don't know about bank analytics in particular) are more personality driven and/or more repeatable. There are few industries that: - make entirely new things on a regular basis - are mysterious to laypeople - cannot ship 50% of a solution and get 50% of the value
- zelos 10y ago
  I don't think those are all that true of software in general. Most software isn't particularly new: how many "Yet Another CRUD app" projects are there? And with software you can ship a percentage of the features and add more later, unlike (say) hardware manufacturing, civil engineering, chemical engineering or architecture. Maybe software is reasonably different in that there are a lot of management level people with little technical knowledge of how the work gets done? I don't know how that compares to other similarly technical industries.
- VLM 10y ago
  OK medical in general, obstetrician in specific. Or perhaps dentist. Certainly the whole pathology sector.
blub 10y ago
These are just games designed to avoid some estimation biases. The problem with biases is that one still can be caught by them even if they're aware that they exist, so such games might have some value. An alternative would be to explain what the biases are and address them in each estimation round. But who does that really? We've settled on playing games, which can seem childish at times.
- UK-AL 10y ago
  However most of these biases are slightly recursive. it always takes 20% longer than expected, even when taking into account it takes 20% longer.
  - pvdebbe 10y ago
    Probably because of Parkinsons' Law.
matthewmacleod 10y ago
I am just baffled by the assumption that such practices only exist to piss off engineers. I do a bit of planning poker with my team every couple of weeks, despite being a pretty experienced engineer, and it's great. It's been good at exposing assumptions or concerns that members of the team have, or about confirming that everybody is on the same page wrt. what the complexity of a particular task is likely to be. I reckon that more groups should be doing this, and not fewer.
lmm 10y ago
> do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. and they'd transfer out of any group where a manager tried to implement such a practice. More fool them if so. I think pg said something along the lines of "unprofessional is what you say when you don't like something but don't have any real criticism".
clifanatic 10y ago
Good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. When I was battling my way through calc III or setting up 1000-node monte carlo network simulations for my master's degree, I never expected to be treated like an auto-assembly-line worker, but here I am, punching a virtual clock (er, "timesheet") day after day, trying to come up with excuses for my existence in yet another daily standup.

humanrebar 10y ago

> do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. Most industries (don't know about bank analytics in particular) are more personality driven and/or more repeatable. There are few industries that: - make entirely new things on a regular basis - are mysterious to laypeople - cannot ship 50% of a solution and get 50% of the value

zelos 10y ago
I don't think those are all that true of software in general. Most software isn't particularly new: how many "Yet Another CRUD app" projects are there? And with software you can ship a percentage of the features and add more later, unlike (say) hardware manufacturing, civil engineering, chemical engineering or architecture. Maybe software is reasonably different in that there are a lot of management level people with little technical knowledge of how the work gets done? I don't know how that compares to other similarly technical industries.
VLM 10y ago
OK medical in general, obstetrician in specific. Or perhaps dentist. Certainly the whole pathology sector.

blub 10y ago

These are just games designed to avoid some estimation biases. The problem with biases is that one still can be caught by them even if they're aware that they exist, so such games might have some value. An alternative would be to explain what the biases are and address them in each estimation round. But who does that really? We've settled on playing games, which can seem childish at times.

UK-AL 10y ago
However most of these biases are slightly recursive. it always takes 20% longer than expected, even when taking into account it takes 20% longer.
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  Probably because of Parkinsons' Law.

matthewmacleod 10y ago

I am just baffled by the assumption that such practices only exist to piss off engineers. I do a bit of planning poker with my team every couple of weeks, despite being a pretty experienced engineer, and it's great. It's been good at exposing assumptions or concerns that members of the team have, or about confirming that everybody is on the same page wrt. what the complexity of a particular task is likely to be. I reckon that more groups should be doing this, and not fewer.

lmm 10y ago

> do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. and they'd transfer out of any group where a manager tried to implement such a practice. More fool them if so. I think pg said something along the lines of "unprofessional is what you say when you don't like something but don't have any real criticism".

clifanatic 10y ago

Good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. When I was battling my way through calc III or setting up 1000-node monte carlo network simulations for my master's degree, I never expected to be treated like an auto-assembly-line worker, but here I am, punching a virtual clock (er, "timesheet") day after day, trying to come up with excuses for my existence in yet another daily standup.