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My primary advantage over the Scrum Master that I replaced was hand writing all the required JIRA changes during the meeting, and doing them on my own time late

by orzig 6y ago

My primary advantage over the Scrum Master that I replaced was hand writing all the required JIRA changes during the meeting, and doing them on my own time later. I was a hero! Highly recommended.

kiksy 6y ago
Nice. This would likely solve a huge chunk of push back against JIRA.
- ori_b 6y ago
  Yes, I'd also enjoy jira if the company would pay someone else to use it for me.
  - my_usernam3 6y ago
    Oh man I think I need a new pair of underpants just thinking about that! That being said, my current manager is super awesome about minimizing our JIRA involvement so I really shouldn't be complaining atm.
josephg 6y ago
That would be great. On a client project a few years ago I effectively bullied the product owner into doing that. We were a few weeks away from a launch. I had sat down with our designer and we made a list together of about 30 changes we needed to make (“this is the wrong blue. This is 2px too big. Etc). The product owner wanted me to put all the changes through our normal process - make a jira issue for each one and we can do task estimation as a team and assign them, and so on. But most of them were tasks that would take a few minutes at most. (Some of the problems I fixed live while working with the designer). Our launch deadline was fast approaching and it would have taken more time to write a good jira ticket than it would to fix most of the issues - let alone discussing them as a group to estimate. While arguing he ended up showing his cards by admitting that the main reason he wanted everything in jira was for reporting. How else would upper management know that we were making progress? I said that sounded like his job, not mine. And he begrudgingly agreed and took my plain text list and dutifully retyped everything one by one into jira tickets. And then marked them all complete a week later when I’d fixed them all. I think that experience killed the last bit of respect I had for Agile as a methodology - at least as it’s practiced in the wild. If we were using something lighter - like trello - I don’t think I would have resisted so much.
- firepoet 6y ago
  That is such bad Agile. No wonder people have such bad feelings about it. :-(
- signal11 6y ago
  Great story, but re the “killed respect for Agile” bit: Agile done right is all about less process. It’s right there on the Agile Manifesto: > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools I’d also read https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html for an illustration of what is considered valuable — especially the bit about simplicity which process heavy (aka fake-agile) agile consultants totally miss; also the bits about what constitutes project progress & how to most efficiently convey information. You should be able to tailor your agile processes to what makes sense for you. Following the herd and insisting on agile ceremonies “because everyone else does it / someone told us to”, even to your team’s detriment, is cargo-culting. In your case you clearly tailored your process to something that improved your efficiency and met your reporting requirements, so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing agile “right”.
  - josephg 6y ago
    Oh, I’ve read all that. But I feel like there’s two agile methodologies - one that the authors intended, a lightweight adaptive attitude where you ground out your process based on what works with your team. And then there’s Agile: The Process as prescribed by agile consultants who go to agile seminars. This agile insists on daily standup, point based estimation, velocity tracking, jira (for some reason), etc. Otherwise you are Doing Agile Wrong, and you will be cast off the holy mountain. I get the sense the authors of agile used words like “scrum” because they imagine software development like a full contact sport; where everyone is fully engaged with all their senses to truly be aware of what’s happening, what’s needed and what is the most important thing to work on. The cargo culting agile consultant approach always feels like an attempt to make software into a repeatable assembly line, and make software engineers into factory workers.
    - signal11 6y ago

by orzig 6y ago

My primary advantage over the Scrum Master that I replaced was hand writing all the required JIRA changes during the meeting, and doing them on my own time later. I was a hero! Highly recommended.

kiksy 6y ago

Nice. This would likely solve a huge chunk of push back against JIRA.

ori_b 6y ago
Yes, I'd also enjoy jira if the company would pay someone else to use it for me.
- my_usernam3 6y ago
  Oh man I think I need a new pair of underpants just thinking about that! That being said, my current manager is super awesome about minimizing our JIRA involvement so I really shouldn't be complaining atm.

josephg 6y ago

That would be great. On a client project a few years ago I effectively bullied the product owner into doing that. We were a few weeks away from a launch. I had sat down with our designer and we made a list together of about 30 changes we needed to make (“this is the wrong blue. This is 2px too big. Etc). The product owner wanted me to put all the changes through our normal process - make a jira issue for each one and we can do task estimation as a team and assign them, and so on. But most of them were tasks that would take a few minutes at most. (Some of the problems I fixed live while working with the designer). Our launch deadline was fast approaching and it would have taken more time to write a good jira ticket than it would to fix most of the issues - let alone discussing them as a group to estimate. While arguing he ended up showing his cards by admitting that the main reason he wanted everything in jira was for reporting. How else would upper management know that we were making progress? I said that sounded like his job, not mine. And he begrudgingly agreed and took my plain text list and dutifully retyped everything one by one into jira tickets. And then marked them all complete a week later when I’d fixed them all. I think that experience killed the last bit of respect I had for Agile as a methodology - at least as it’s practiced in the wild. If we were using something lighter - like trello - I don’t think I would have resisted so much.

firepoet 6y ago
That is such bad Agile. No wonder people have such bad feelings about it. :-(
signal11 6y ago
Great story, but re the “killed respect for Agile” bit: Agile done right is all about less process. It’s right there on the Agile Manifesto: > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools I’d also read https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html for an illustration of what is considered valuable — especially the bit about simplicity which process heavy (aka fake-agile) agile consultants totally miss; also the bits about what constitutes project progress & how to most efficiently convey information. You should be able to tailor your agile processes to what makes sense for you. Following the herd and insisting on agile ceremonies “because everyone else does it / someone told us to”, even to your team’s detriment, is cargo-culting. In your case you clearly tailored your process to something that improved your efficiency and met your reporting requirements, so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing agile “right”.
- josephg 6y ago
  Oh, I’ve read all that. But I feel like there’s two agile methodologies - one that the authors intended, a lightweight adaptive attitude where you ground out your process based on what works with your team. And then there’s Agile: The Process as prescribed by agile consultants who go to agile seminars. This agile insists on daily standup, point based estimation, velocity tracking, jira (for some reason), etc. Otherwise you are Doing Agile Wrong, and you will be cast off the holy mountain. I get the sense the authors of agile used words like “scrum” because they imagine software development like a full contact sport; where everyone is fully engaged with all their senses to truly be aware of what’s happening, what’s needed and what is the most important thing to work on. The cargo culting agile consultant approach always feels like an attempt to make software into a repeatable assembly line, and make software engineers into factory workers.
  - signal11 6y ago