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> If you don't have a PM, don't fuss with trying to rotate acceptance duties amongst the engineers. Use a different tool, one that doesn't have as strict a sepa

by twic 5y ago

> If you don't have a PM, don't fuss with trying to rotate acceptance duties amongst the engineers. Use a different tool, one that doesn't have as strict a separation between designing, delivering, and evaluating. Okay. > One of the insidious things about Tracker (and a lot of Extreme Programming practices) is that it can lure you into thinking that substitutes for customer feedback are just as good as the real thing. "The feature's finished, I clicked 'deliver' and the PM accepted it." Nope. The feature isn't done until you hear back from a customer about it. So, if Tracker can't track stories though their whole lifecycle, why not use a different tool that can? The answer is that for institutionalised Pivots such as the author, there is an identity between Pivotal Tracker and correct process. So, if you want to follow a shitty process, don't use Tracker, but if you're following a good process, Tracker must be the right tool. Even though it still can't do this very basic essential thing. That said, i strongly agree with almost all the practical advice in this piece! Perhaps not surprising, given that i'm a partially deprogrammed ex-Pivot. Oh, except: > Delete your icebox I've never heard an argument for this that made any sense at all to me. I suspect this is just another manifestation of deletionism vs inclusionism, and as such, there is no explanation for either belief that is intelligible to someone who does not already believe it.

lbayes 5y ago
Challenge accepted! I found myself in a monthly meeting of 12 or so (Unnamed FANG) managers where they would curate a collection of 3,000-5,000 bugs / issues / feature requests. It was almost entirely the same collection of old, stale bullshit that no one was ever going to work on. The meeting started with recently added items, and those were usually digested within minutes. The rest of the old items were just waste. This meeting sometimes took a full day. It took enormous amounts of time and energy to review and re-review and debate and re-debate, and with every new contributor, all the old discussions had to be repeated for many of these items. 100% of this effort was waste. In contrast, our team carried zero open defects. We agreed to either fix or honestly reject defects immediately. We experienced none of this waste and on the handful of occasions where we inappropriately rejected an important defect, it became clear very quickly and we fixed it. Put the things you want to do someday in some other tool. The icebox is cancer.
- twic 5y ago
  That's amazing. You have my sympathy! But the problem wasn't the icebox, it's a culture which allows twelve managers to sit in a room for a whole day completely wasting their time.
  - zikzak 5y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I did an internship with a federal government agency in 1999 and every Friday was is going through the backlog and saying "no change" (whole day, no kidding). I learned a valuable lesson and have never forgot it.

by twic 5y ago

lbayes 5y ago

Challenge accepted! I found myself in a monthly meeting of 12 or so (Unnamed FANG) managers where they would curate a collection of 3,000-5,000 bugs / issues / feature requests. It was almost entirely the same collection of old, stale bullshit that no one was ever going to work on. The meeting started with recently added items, and those were usually digested within minutes. The rest of the old items were just waste. This meeting sometimes took a full day. It took enormous amounts of time and energy to review and re-review and debate and re-debate, and with every new contributor, all the old discussions had to be repeated for many of these items. 100% of this effort was waste. In contrast, our team carried zero open defects. We agreed to either fix or honestly reject defects immediately. We experienced none of this waste and on the handful of occasions where we inappropriately rejected an important defect, it became clear very quickly and we fixed it. Put the things you want to do someday in some other tool. The icebox is cancer.

twic 5y ago
That's amazing. You have my sympathy! But the problem wasn't the icebox, it's a culture which allows twelve managers to sit in a room for a whole day completely wasting their time.
- zikzak 5y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I did an internship with a federal government agency in 1999 and every Friday was is going through the backlog and saying "no change" (whole day, no kidding). I learned a valuable lesson and have never forgot it.