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I'm surprised that nobody here realize that this marketing team has reinvented part of agile and lean managment? Making devs accountable but not holding respons

I'm surprised that nobody here realize that this marketing team has reinvented part of agile and lean managment? Making devs accountable but not holding responsible, group solving problems and Andon, prioritizing tasks, a bit about handling external dependencies, kind of sprints, visibility, staying on budget... They're obviously not following Scrum in Action at the letter, but I really saw a striking resemblance with the "agile & lean" company where I work

watwut 10y ago
I would not say so. In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything. In this system, individual person had own task and was accountable for that task completion. It also sounds like they were working independently and wouldn't get help unless they asked for it. "I will fire you if deadline is suddenly not met and no one else is there find out before if you don't say so" is on the opposite extreme from agile "everything is collective task, we check up on you every four hours and you are neither autonomous nor responsible".
- mindcrime 10y ago
  In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything. Where in the world do you get this idea? For one, there is no such thing as "agile", in the sense of a prescriptive methodology that would make such a declaration. There are just individual methodologies that claim varying levels of adherence to the Agile Manifesto[1]. And even then, the popular "Agile" methodologies like Scrum, XP, etc. never say that no one has personal responsibility for anything. Some say that teams are self-organizing and that you succeed or fail as a team, but I think everybody understands that that later part doesn't mean you can just come in and stare at the walls all day with no consequences. we check up on you every four hours If someone is "checking up on you every four hours" it's almost 100% certain that whatever process you're using has absolutely nothing to do with "agile".
  - vacri 10y ago
    Are you sure? Daily standups = checking up on you every 8 hours, and then you have tons of checkups in-between. Retros, sprint planning, ticket management. Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing. Agile methodology is not "here's a large task, I don't want to hear from you again until it's completed".
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      None of that stuff is "Agile". Those things are artifacts / ceremony related with specific methodologies which are only "agile" to varying degrees. Read the Agile Manifesto, there's almost nothing prescriptive in there at all. Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing. That might be the case for some specific "agile" methodology, but if there's a core essence to Agile, it's about embracing and responding to change... nothing to do with tech leads.
      - vacri 10y ago
        How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's not frequent communication? What form of agile methodologies have the developers going off on their own for weeks without oversight? How do they 'respond to change'? A strict literal reading of the agile manifesto doesn't include daily standups, yes, but if you read it at anything other than the most superficial level, frequent communication is necessary.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's not frequent communication? Frequent communication doesn't have to be synchronous, prescheduled, or in-person, though, and it doesn't have to be through a heirarchy (team lead). Also, the phrase "Agile methodology" is almost an oxymoron (and absolutely incorrect in terms of most of the methodologies it is applied to); a development methodology in the usual sense cannot be Agile, though a team's higher-level methodology that controls choice of and change to the development methodology can be.
NAHWheatCracker 10y ago
It's not surprising that no one else commented about it because agile/scrum/lean are terms that cast a huge net. If I just set deadlines, then I've recreated part of Scrum which has deadlines at the end of Sprints. Deadlines existed long before Scrum was defined. I think of Agile, Scrum, and Lean as just names for common ideas about the nature of how work can get done efficiently. Very few of the ideas from these practices are unique to those practices. The reasoning for why those ideas work doesn't go away if you don't call it Agile/Scrum/Lean. The important thing to recognize is that the ideas have merits on their own, and their inclusion in any particular lexicon or philosophy is incidental.

watwut 10y ago

I would not say so. In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything. In this system, individual person had own task and was accountable for that task completion. It also sounds like they were working independently and wouldn't get help unless they asked for it. "I will fire you if deadline is suddenly not met and no one else is there find out before if you don't say so" is on the opposite extreme from agile "everything is collective task, we check up on you every four hours and you are neither autonomous nor responsible".

mindcrime 10y ago
In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything. Where in the world do you get this idea? For one, there is no such thing as "agile", in the sense of a prescriptive methodology that would make such a declaration. There are just individual methodologies that claim varying levels of adherence to the Agile Manifesto[1]. And even then, the popular "Agile" methodologies like Scrum, XP, etc. never say that no one has personal responsibility for anything. Some say that teams are self-organizing and that you succeed or fail as a team, but I think everybody understands that that later part doesn't mean you can just come in and stare at the walls all day with no consequences. we check up on you every four hours If someone is "checking up on you every four hours" it's almost 100% certain that whatever process you're using has absolutely nothing to do with "agile".
- vacri 10y ago
  Are you sure? Daily standups = checking up on you every 8 hours, and then you have tons of checkups in-between. Retros, sprint planning, ticket management. Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing. Agile methodology is not "here's a large task, I don't want to hear from you again until it's completed".
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    None of that stuff is "Agile". Those things are artifacts / ceremony related with specific methodologies which are only "agile" to varying degrees. Read the Agile Manifesto, there's almost nothing prescriptive in there at all. Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing. That might be the case for some specific "agile" methodology, but if there's a core essence to Agile, it's about embracing and responding to change... nothing to do with tech leads.
    - vacri 10y ago
      How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's not frequent communication? What form of agile methodologies have the developers going off on their own for weeks without oversight? How do they 'respond to change'? A strict literal reading of the agile manifesto doesn't include daily standups, yes, but if you read it at anything other than the most superficial level, frequent communication is necessary.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's not frequent communication? Frequent communication doesn't have to be synchronous, prescheduled, or in-person, though, and it doesn't have to be through a heirarchy (team lead). Also, the phrase "Agile methodology" is almost an oxymoron (and absolutely incorrect in terms of most of the methodologies it is applied to); a development methodology in the usual sense cannot be Agile, though a team's higher-level methodology that controls choice of and change to the development methodology can be.

NAHWheatCracker 10y ago

It's not surprising that no one else commented about it because agile/scrum/lean are terms that cast a huge net. If I just set deadlines, then I've recreated part of Scrum which has deadlines at the end of Sprints. Deadlines existed long before Scrum was defined. I think of Agile, Scrum, and Lean as just names for common ideas about the nature of how work can get done efficiently. Very few of the ideas from these practices are unique to those practices. The reasoning for why those ideas work doesn't go away if you don't call it Agile/Scrum/Lean. The important thing to recognize is that the ideas have merits on their own, and their inclusion in any particular lexicon or philosophy is incidental.