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"This task needs to be broken up into manageable pieces badly." This seems to be a sentiment I see a lot, but I don't think it applies equally to all people.
by jakubp 9y ago
"This task needs to be broken up into manageable pieces badly."
This seems to be a sentiment I see a lot, but I don't think it applies equally to all people.
Maybe it depends whether the person doing the task is a mature worker (in the sense of doing independent work).
When you break things down, you make it easier for less experienced workers to complete work. It helps the managers with tracking progress.
However, increased breakdown is very costly on many levels. You need extra time to break things down (senior dev), extra effort to track it in project management tools, extra time to deal with it all every day. It's costly.
Moreover, dividing work that way is harder and less efficient for more experienced workers. They often dislike being micromanaged and probed multiple times a week (or day) about their progress. Give them space and they excel, but ask them to explain what they do, what's next, how much time is left, etc. and they get annoyed.
Mature workers generally know who needs to be informed of issues, recognize them early on, and proactively resolve those. "Process" is what you typically need when you don't have many mature workers. It's fine, but perhaps it's best to be careful who we apply it to.
- matwood 9y ago> When you break things down, you make it easier for less experienced workers to complete work. Actually you make it easier for everyone. The point of breaking down a task is to start removing assumptions, and make it so others can also lend a hand. > However, increased breakdown is very costly on many levels. You need extra time to break things down (senior dev), extra effort to track it in project management tools, extra time to deal with it all every day. It's costly. Time and again I have heard this reasoning, but in my experience the real costs comes when not breaking down tasks. There is an unknown unknown problem with large tasks, that is often solved by breaking them down with the stake holder instead of finding the issues during acceptance. I do agree though that the right level to break down tasks is an art that ends up being team specific.
- ryandrake 9y agoIt's also so you can get the jump on risks as early as possible. Consider two projects, both roughly a week long. Project A is broken down into day-long tasks, and project B isn't. On day two, the guy doing project A reports he wasn't able to get milestone 1 completely done yesterday. Others can now step in and help if needed, after only a day. The guy doing project B, who reports "analytics yesterday, analytics today" needs to subjectively assess whether or not he's behind, and depending on how experienced he is at this, nobody will know until the sprint is blown that he was unrecoverably behind.