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Scrum is a tool. It even has a tool built in to take care of these things, the retro. If you have someone on the team who is counting every point and dogmatic

Scrum is a tool. It even has a tool built in to take care of these things, the retro. If you have someone on the team who is counting every point and dogmatically sitting on every metric that should be brought up in the retro as 'something that is not going well'. These tools are a way for devs to say 'here is how I am going to break this up and you have a limited amount of time so pick what you want'. The metrics are to help you realize you are doing an anti pattern. But if you force everyone to be good at them they will hide what is wrong. One group I was in everything was a #1 priority. I had to sit the manager down in his office for a couple of hours and make him pick the priorities. It turns out he did not know what he really wanted, yet he wanted to micromanage everything. I had to show him that you have 4 devs and they can not work on 15 things at the same time 200% of the time. They have lives outside of work and you will get nothing done if they are jumping around at every whim you come up with. After that the team worked much better. I would at the start of each sprint make him pick what order he wants things in then the devs could come in and fix it up correctly. Team management is totally on the table of 'things to work on' in scrum yet many PM's seem to forget that. My new team has 3 15-30 min calls a day. I just joined this team so I am watching for now for a couple of sprints. But you can bet money on the fact I am bringing that up in a retro. You are distracting everyone at regular intervals and they can not get into anything because they are always prepping for your status meetings. You are leaving them basically 30% of their day to actually do anything related to the things you want status on. A good PM who 'gets it' is great. One who strictly follows the metrics... yeah

jseban 5y ago
> they can not work on 15 things at the same time 200% of the time. Haha this is funny because it's so true. And this is a person who is actually a supposed to be a professional at allocating resources ;)
amalcon 5y ago
Ah yes, that conversation. Here's the list of things on the road map. Which ones do you want to bump to next quarter/year in order to do this new priority? "None" is only an option if you can somehow retroactively hire another dev 90 days ago.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  My favs are the ones who still despite all of that somehow think they can 'make it work out'.
- indemnity 5y ago
  And onboarding the dev is free
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    and will 'hit the ground running'
sokoloff 5y ago
If everything is a number one priority, nothing is. I’ve literally told our internal users “if you can’t tell me which of these two things is more important to you, my team will work on them in whichever order is best for us.” “If you could only have one and then the other, which would you pick to go first?” “But we have to have them both.” “Are they related/linked?” “No.” “Then which would you want first?” “I want them both.” “Thank you; I don’t need any more information from you.”
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  I get that. I have used that exact way of handling it. I was just tired of the 'everything is first' and got pissed off. To prove that they were being silly I picked something I knew for a fact would be a low priority and said 'this is going first. 'oh well not that' 'ahhhh you do know what order this is in compared to the others lets write that down'. I made it painful meeting wise for them to do that to me. Think in one meeting I walked in with a quarter and just started flipping for what went first. They did not like that either. Again 'ahhh you do know lets write that down'. The confusion comes from 'i want it done' to 'which one first'. Those are not the same thing. Something will go first. Either you pick it or I do. If I pick you may not like the answer.

jseban 5y ago

> they can not work on 15 things at the same time 200% of the time. Haha this is funny because it's so true. And this is a person who is actually a supposed to be a professional at allocating resources ;)

amalcon 5y ago

Ah yes, that conversation. Here's the list of things on the road map. Which ones do you want to bump to next quarter/year in order to do this new priority? "None" is only an option if you can somehow retroactively hire another dev 90 days ago.

sumtechguy 5y ago
My favs are the ones who still despite all of that somehow think they can 'make it work out'.
indemnity 5y ago
And onboarding the dev is free
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  and will 'hit the ground running'

sokoloff 5y ago

If everything is a number one priority, nothing is. I’ve literally told our internal users “if you can’t tell me which of these two things is more important to you, my team will work on them in whichever order is best for us.” “If you could only have one and then the other, which would you pick to go first?” “But we have to have them both.” “Are they related/linked?” “No.” “Then which would you want first?” “I want them both.” “Thank you; I don’t need any more information from you.”

sumtechguy 5y ago
I get that. I have used that exact way of handling it. I was just tired of the 'everything is first' and got pissed off. To prove that they were being silly I picked something I knew for a fact would be a low priority and said 'this is going first. 'oh well not that' 'ahhhh you do know what order this is in compared to the others lets write that down'. I made it painful meeting wise for them to do that to me. Think in one meeting I walked in with a quarter and just started flipping for what went first. They did not like that either. Again 'ahhh you do know lets write that down'. The confusion comes from 'i want it done' to 'which one first'. Those are not the same thing. Something will go first. Either you pick it or I do. If I pick you may not like the answer.