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What about the burn down charts? Every project I’ve ever worked on, features are finished, apps and websites are shipped, clients are happy and pay the bills,

What about the burn down charts? Every project I’ve ever worked on, features are finished, apps and websites are shipped, clients are happy and pay the bills, yet the burn down just goes straight to the right and never down. Sometimes right and up if people added more tickets during the sprint. We look at it at the end of the sprint and say ah well and continue on our way. Then sometimes a PM type decides it’s a problem but nothing ever changes it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Jolter 6y ago
That’s not really not a problem with the software though, is it? Draw your burndown chart on paper and you’ll have exactly the same problem.
- Sodman 6y ago
  Well it's at least an indicator something has gone terribly wrong. Your project management software, one of the flagship features of which is reporting - now tells you essentially "no work is being done". Somebody in management panics, the team is told to get its act together and some variation of "improve the numbers". Yet features are getting shipped and clients are happy. The two most frequent (bad) options teams take to get out of this are: 1) Ignore the burndown chart / any other reports. Everything is fine on the business side, so let's just accept that the reports are broken and not spend time trying to fix them. 2) Have everyone invest more time into using the system (usually on an ongoing basis), so that it produces the correct looking down-and-to-the-right chart. The problem is that with #1, the software is arguably not producing much value, if any. The problem with #2 is that you're spending extra energy and effort to make the software happy, even though outside of the software it seems like your team is working well, shipping features and keeping customers happy - all of which are more important than a pretty graph.
inadequatespace 6y ago
Hit the nail on the head with this. It's sort of like a gimmie "problem" that can be weaponized if anyone is in the mood, but mostly just ignored entirely.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Jolter 6y ago

That’s not really not a problem with the software though, is it? Draw your burndown chart on paper and you’ll have exactly the same problem.

Sodman 6y ago
Well it's at least an indicator something has gone terribly wrong. Your project management software, one of the flagship features of which is reporting - now tells you essentially "no work is being done". Somebody in management panics, the team is told to get its act together and some variation of "improve the numbers". Yet features are getting shipped and clients are happy. The two most frequent (bad) options teams take to get out of this are: 1) Ignore the burndown chart / any other reports. Everything is fine on the business side, so let's just accept that the reports are broken and not spend time trying to fix them. 2) Have everyone invest more time into using the system (usually on an ongoing basis), so that it produces the correct looking down-and-to-the-right chart. The problem is that with #1, the software is arguably not producing much value, if any. The problem with #2 is that you're spending extra energy and effort to make the software happy, even though outside of the software it seems like your team is working well, shipping features and keeping customers happy - all of which are more important than a pretty graph.

inadequatespace 6y ago

Hit the nail on the head with this. It's sort of like a gimmie "problem" that can be weaponized if anyone is in the mood, but mostly just ignored entirely.