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In my enterprise (fr)Agile job, copious amounts of Corpspeak abound. I truly feel like "the inmates are running the asylum". For example: during one of our mor
by misterflibble 4y ago
In my enterprise (fr)Agile job, copious amounts of Corpspeak abound.
I truly feel like "the inmates are running the asylum".
For example: during one of our morning stand up, I remember bringing up a major production issue that I found with our website. Someone "important" uttered the phrase: "Let's take it offline".
After the stand up, no one bothered to follow-up with me about it and I suppose, everyone in our team assumed some technical person would fix it anyway. So naturally I assumed that the "Let's take it offline" phrase meant "I don't want to talk about that now" or "Sounds scary! I hope that goes away" :-]
My question is: were some parts of Corpspeak invented to permit non-technical people to sound more sophisticated and/or intelligent than they actually are?
- phailhaus 4y ago> After the stand up, no one bothered to follow-up with me about it Feedback: it was your responsibility to bring it up later, since you owned the discussion in standup. The reason it was "moved offline" is because standup is not where you solve problems, it's meant to be a quick sync.
- fudged71 4y agoThat’s my interpretation, too. “We don’t have the time to go into this right now”
- wizofaus 4y agoBut that infuriates me - surely investigating a production issue takes priority over stand-up, and I'd actually wonder why the originator didn't bring it up sooner, unless they happened to find it just before the meeting started. Even then I'd probably excuse myself and ensure everyone relevant was involved in at least triaging the issue. I actually don't mind if stand-ups do end up being a more involved discussion providing what's being discussed is relevant to all present, if not, often the best solution is to let those who needn't be involved leave, then continue the same meeting, rather than wait for some unspecified time when people are "offline" (a term that really is especially silly in these days of zoom-only meetings). But there's often this crazy adherence to rules that says particular meetings must follow a set pattern and not go off course or extend themselves beyond an inflexible limit. I've had stand-ups that last 5 minutes and ones that last 45, and it's invariably the latter ones where anything of significant value takes place - and I'd even argue they're the main reason for having such daily meetings.
- misterflibble 4y agoYou're absolutely right. Sorry I failed to mention that before stand up, I had actually brought it up several times in chat messages the previous night and I also created a User Story/Bug to capture it. I eventually realised that the team "delivery lead" manager was 101% focused on delivering stories for our customer (a manager embedded in the team) and deprioritised/postponed anything not in the sprint objectives.
- Eupraxias 4y agoHow can you have an issue with the term "offline"? It makes perfect sense to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAMRukKqQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAMRukKqQg
- tekla 4y agoTaking it offline is a power move https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAMRukKqQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAMRukKqQg
- jcalabro 4y agoBeat me to it! Their other one on corp speak is also amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ
- Arrath 4y agoSounds like you were supposed to take the website down and wait for the screaming to start.
- misterflibble 4y agoHahhahhhahahhahahhahha I don't need to: our dodgy infrastructure will make sure of that!