5 ms·
I'm not disagreeing with the article, I'm just wondering what painful 'project' oritentated piece of work the writer has had to endure when it crashed into thei
by goldcd 5y ago
I'm not disagreeing with the article, I'm just wondering what painful 'project' oritentated piece of work the writer has had to endure when it crashed into their life.
To my mind there are products and milestones as maybe a point releases within a product - Agile/Scrum.
I've suffered many systems over the years, but this is the one that makes the most sense - and maybe most importantly demarcates responsibilities.
Projects are something external to this procress, product management (i.e. me) need to deal with it - a spanner in the works of what we were all happily orchestrating.
"A project" is a demo we need to make next week, or a customer requirement the next release needs to address. It's something the product needs to deal with - and PM decides whether this should impact dev.
It's the job of PM to sort out the backlog/timeline of the product so it hits the new eternal "project" requirement. Dev shouldn't even have to be aware the project exists - they'll maybe see their backlog change and just have to deliver on that as normal.
Obviously the reality is that they're aware of the project once PM has accepted it, and you ask them to change their course - but dev shouldn't directly care.
- goldcd 5y agoI now just realize I'm describing Agile..
- ec109685 5y agoHiding things like “projects” from devs and keeping them isolated and working through their backlog blissfully unaware of the travails of the PM seems awfully top down. A PM should bring the team together, collaboratively work on what should be in the backlog, and provide enough context to the whole team so they can self organize and holistically deliver maximum value to the consumer. 10 heads are far better than a single godlike PM sorting everything out.
- goldcd 5y agoSorry, definitely wasn't saying "hide projects from devs" As PdO I see my job (and also that of my partner Dev Manager) as sheltering dev from the shit churning shit above and my sole purpose as providing backlog/semi-coherent guidance. My downward job is to make sure every 2 weeks some contiguous stories get created and I sign off on their completion on the way back up - and if my requests match what I get back, I have the joy of absorbing any corporate wrath. I'm a "shit-umbrella" Positive part of the job is when something hits me I can't deflect, I can cash in a few of my 'hopefully not-a-cunt' credits from the team, explain why I'm changing backlog mid-sprint, throw myself at their mercy, explain the issue etc etc - and collectively provide a better result than'agile' could officially provide.
- arcbyte 5y agoYour job as a product owner, as it relates to developers, is to be the customer so we dont have to waste time in phone tag. That meana you have to get inside the customers head and figure out what they want better than they know it and to take accountability when the team built what you thought the customer wanted but you fucked it up.
- ec109685 5y agoWhy should that responsibility solely come from the product manager? Are devs incapable of their own good ideas if given a chance to understand the customer as well? The product manager should be the overall decider, but the best products do not germinate out of a single person’s head.
- yodon 5y agoThe person you're responding to is not advocating that ideas are the responsibility of the PM, nor are they saying the PM should be the overall decider. They are saying the PM is responsible for collecting information from the customer and bringing that information to the team in an efficient manner so the team can make decisions based on that information. If the PM brings incorrect or inadequate information, the resulting product will be poor because the team will have made its decisions on the basis of that poor information.
- nickforr 5y agoHow does the PM know better than devs about whether or not they’re bringing the right information and not inadvertently summarising something incorrectly that’s technically important? Gatekeepers are generally inefficient longer-term.
- arcbyte 5y agoYou're attributing gatekeeping to the wrong place here. The customer is the gate and the customer's unavailability is keeping the gate shut. The PO reduces that inadvertent gatekeeping by being always available with customer insights so the devs don't twiddle their thumbs or worse, build thr wrong thing, because they were guessing what the customer wanted in the absence of actually talking to them. The PO reduces gatekeeping because they are an always available customer.
- mulmen 5y agoWhy would proDUct management decide what impacts dev? Surely that’s a question for proJEct management?