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The problem with "investigation" tasks or "spikes" is that it still boils down to essentially having to ask permission to do something. I really think extreme o
by overgard 9y ago
The problem with "investigation" tasks or "spikes" is that it still boils down to essentially having to ask permission to do something. I really think extreme one-sided work transparency and a culture where everything is measured and permission has to be sought to work on something is entirely antithetical to encouraging creativity. Innovation tends to come from playfulness, and having to schedule a Jira task with a project manager for every idea is going to have a chilling effect.
- goalieca 9y agoYou’ve hit my first main point of hatred against agile. It’s really a form of micromanaging in disguise. They sell it as developer empowerment but that’s just cognitive dissonance.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoThat depends on the company. Some companies (in my experience) do engineer-only scrums where programmers can talk about their blockers and ask for advice from seniors; others do mixed scrums where the engineers are basically reporting their progress to the product manager or someone, and where often technical questions are discouraged. I'd tend to think the latter are "doing it wrong", but then again, who am I to say? I just know I much preferred working for the companies who did it the former way.
- watwut 9y agoThis idea that only managers micromanage and fellow engineers never do that us one of biggest agile fallacies. Also, need to ask question should not require whole team meeting.
- mmcnl 9y agoThis is not a problem of agile, it's a problem with the implementation of agile. A company that tends to micromanage that implements agile will use agile to micromanage. It's unavoidable.
- 0x445442 9y agoI've heard various forms of this response before but I'm always confused by it. If agile isn't the offending processes in question then what is agile. And if the response is it's a verb not not a noun then it's really nothing but good hackers employing tried and true practices.
- scarface74 9y agoAnytime someone complains about agile and then a "true believer" defends it as "that's not agile", it reminds me of the "No True Scotsman"
- dasmoth 9y agoQuite. I’m sure I’ve seen “no true scrummaster” used in the past to describe this form of debate.
- solipsism 9y agoI can't imagine taking up an investigation of any significant size (say, more than a day) that I don't mention to my team. And yes that means putting it on a board. This isn't asking for permission. It's making others aware. There's a good chance someone on my team has some valuable input. Or awareness of what time doing may affect what they choose to do somehow. Granted, my team is small and close-knit. But the idea that keeping others informed of what you're doing is considered "asking permission" points to some serious pathology on your team. And that pathology is not agile or scrum. We do scrum, and I'm sort of lukewarm about how much I like scrum. But whether we're doing scrum or something else, I am completely empowered to make my own decisions about my work. And I simultaneously value that the rest of my team keeps me informed of what they're doing. This is how we kick ass.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoNothing in agile stops you from creating experimentation tasks or simply spending time on whatever you want. It just asks you to honestly be aware of how you spend time.
- overgard 9y agoWell, I'm pretty well aware of how I spend my time. Agile serves no purpose for me in that regard. The point of agile is so that others can track how I spend my time. Whether that's reasonable and if/when that's a good idea is entirely about context; but much like quantum mechanics, observing behavior can change it (positively or negatively).