4 ms·

Would love to hear your take on agile. You should write a "blog" post about it... Company A would eventually get a good reputation and win in the long run.

by z3t4 6y ago

vbtemp 6y ago
In an idealized world consisting of perfectly rational econ agents company A would win out. However we live in a world of people full of cognitive biases and driven by fear, greed, sentiment, and a whole slew of not perfectly rational drives.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I've seen individuals and small groups that would fit in category A loose out to C's. People that quietly get on with their work without problem whilst a bunch of drama queens get all the attention for heroically fixing problems they created in the first place.
- vbtemp 6y ago
  This is exactly right. A team that crams agile sprints with tons of "tickets", makes features that aren't fully thought out (necessitating more "tickets" to fix them), and has steady influx of general bugs cropping up is perceived to work super hard. People like to see noses to the grindstone and people stressed out. The team that works carefully and deliberately, does things well the first time, and seems to be moving at a relaxed pace is perceived to be lazy and inefficient. People are offended by this. This hit me hard the first time I was a project lead -- the customer was delighted, the product was steady and reliable, but my staff were super uncomfortable and insecure -- because the project was successful and they did their job well and like professionals, they realized that they weren't super busy. And when they aren't super busy it means they may be on the chopping block - it was terribly depressing. No amount of reassurance that, well, this is what life is like when you're good at what you do really settled anyone. So, consciously or not, we fill our time with "work theater". We work really hard to write new code that then requires more work to get right and to fix, and with a backlog of work, it looks like we're working really hard. Being always a little behind, we then make the case for more funding, more staff, more resources, etc etc etc... And the cycle continues.

Would love to hear your take on agile. You should write a "blog" post about it... Company A would eventually get a good reputation and win in the long run.

by z3t4 6y ago

Would love to hear your take on agile. You should write a "blog" post about it... Company A would eventually get a good reputation and win in the long run.

vbtemp 6y ago

In an idealized world consisting of perfectly rational econ agents company A would win out. However we live in a world of people full of cognitive biases and driven by fear, greed, sentiment, and a whole slew of not perfectly rational drives.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I've seen individuals and small groups that would fit in category A loose out to C's. People that quietly get on with their work without problem whilst a bunch of drama queens get all the attention for heroically fixing problems they created in the first place.

vbtemp 6y ago
This is exactly right. A team that crams agile sprints with tons of "tickets", makes features that aren't fully thought out (necessitating more "tickets" to fix them), and has steady influx of general bugs cropping up is perceived to work super hard. People like to see noses to the grindstone and people stressed out. The team that works carefully and deliberately, does things well the first time, and seems to be moving at a relaxed pace is perceived to be lazy and inefficient. People are offended by this. This hit me hard the first time I was a project lead -- the customer was delighted, the product was steady and reliable, but my staff were super uncomfortable and insecure -- because the project was successful and they did their job well and like professionals, they realized that they weren't super busy. And when they aren't super busy it means they may be on the chopping block - it was terribly depressing. No amount of reassurance that, well, this is what life is like when you're good at what you do really settled anyone. So, consciously or not, we fill our time with "work theater". We work really hard to write new code that then requires more work to get right and to fix, and with a backlog of work, it looks like we're working really hard. Being always a little behind, we then make the case for more funding, more staff, more resources, etc etc etc... And the cycle continues.