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> If the execs and managers can't get out of the mentality of planning X deliverables for Q3, Y deliverables for Q4 and Z feature by December 10th to satisfy a

by timr 4y ago

> If the execs and managers can't get out of the mentality of planning X deliverables for Q3, Y deliverables for Q4 and Z feature by December 10th to satisfy a $10m customer then it becomes hollow and fake no matter how genuine and well meaning the consultants are. Dysfunctional upper management: maybe. Customers don't pay money today for products delivered on an indefinite, unspecified future timeline: definitely. More software engineers should have to be involved with customer conversations to internalize this...or just, I dunno...do a construction project or something. See how much you like it when you've paid money for something bespoke, and the people doing the work refuse to set schedules or tell you what you're getting. Suddenly you'll be a dysfunctional manager, too. Agile works best when you have a consultancy situation, and the customer can be directly involved in the construction of the product while it is being built. This rarely applies. But even then, customers tend to make ridiculous demands like "advance notice before you change the software from under us so that we can re-train our large team of users", and as soon as you do that, you've got a calendar, a deliverable and a deadline. Probably some Gantt charts in there too, because only trivial projects have a single deliverable. Then you say "OK, let's actually be agile, break down the project timeline using iterative deliverables and clear development cycles"...now you have sprints. I'm not defending "Scrum" -- just saying that deliverables and deadlines are part of life.

pydry 4y ago
>Customers don't pay money today for products delivered on an indefinite, unspecified future timeline They frequently do for features though. I happily waited a year for my bank to implement virtual credit cards. As a corporate user of software I have waited similar lengths of time for features I really wanted. This reality usually doesnt stop some layer(s) of management from waterfalling the shit out of everything simply because they can't conceive of an alternative. >See how much you like it when you've paid money for something bespoke, and the people doing the work refuse to set schedules or tell you what you're getting. Yeah, this is why I try to avoid that type of software development at all costs. I got burned on it when I was young, thinking that nothing was more natural than treating software like a construction project. Practically speaking, when you do ask for something bespoke - whether it's a skyscraper, crossrail or a bathroom remodeling or software, you've gotta be prepared for delays and budget overruns. Software is much the same, and waterfalling the shit out of this type of thing may be unavoidable, but so is the inevitable shitty result. There are entire sub industries that can't seem to produce anything good (e.g. healthcare software) and I think this model of operation is largely why. This is why it's better for execs to treat bespoke deliveries as something radioactive and try to minimize them as much as possible even if that means saying the scariest six words in an exec's vocab "sorry, we can't take your money".
- timr 4y ago
  > I happily waited a year for my bank to implement virtual credit cards. Not the kind of feature I'm talking about -- your bank isn't contracting with you, personally, to make a credit card. Apple doesn't care at all about my opinions on when to release their next phone. Google doesn't ask me what they should name Chat this week. Nonetheless, the stakeholders for such a project are going to be internal to the company, and there will be many: customer support, billing, compliance, marketing and legal, just to name a few. There will also be many deadlines, simply because huge numbers of people have to coordinate to turn out a complicated project. > As a corporate user of software I have waited similar lengths of time for features I really wanted. Again, unless you are signing the purchase order, you're not the customer, and you don't set the deadlines. Someone else is setting the deadlines for you. Also, just because you had to wait a long time doesn't mean that deadlines didn't exist for the project. > This is why it's better for execs to treat bespoke deliveries as something radioactive All software projects are bespoke. Some are smaller and more tightly scoped than others, but if you didn't need custom work done, you wouldn't pay an engineer to do it.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >Not the kind of feature I'm talking about I know. I expressly declared the type of feature you were talking about radioactive. The tragedy isnt that this type of feature exists it's that some managers cant conceive of there being any other kind and will turn every feature radioactive. Thats how we get shit software.

by timr 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

>Customers don't pay money today for products delivered on an indefinite, unspecified future timeline They frequently do for features though. I happily waited a year for my bank to implement virtual credit cards. As a corporate user of software I have waited similar lengths of time for features I really wanted. This reality usually doesnt stop some layer(s) of management from waterfalling the shit out of everything simply because they can't conceive of an alternative. >See how much you like it when you've paid money for something bespoke, and the people doing the work refuse to set schedules or tell you what you're getting. Yeah, this is why I try to avoid that type of software development at all costs. I got burned on it when I was young, thinking that nothing was more natural than treating software like a construction project. Practically speaking, when you do ask for something bespoke - whether it's a skyscraper, crossrail or a bathroom remodeling or software, you've gotta be prepared for delays and budget overruns. Software is much the same, and waterfalling the shit out of this type of thing may be unavoidable, but so is the inevitable shitty result. There are entire sub industries that can't seem to produce anything good (e.g. healthcare software) and I think this model of operation is largely why. This is why it's better for execs to treat bespoke deliveries as something radioactive and try to minimize them as much as possible even if that means saying the scariest six words in an exec's vocab "sorry, we can't take your money".

timr 4y ago
> I happily waited a year for my bank to implement virtual credit cards. Not the kind of feature I'm talking about -- your bank isn't contracting with you, personally, to make a credit card. Apple doesn't care at all about my opinions on when to release their next phone. Google doesn't ask me what they should name Chat this week. Nonetheless, the stakeholders for such a project are going to be internal to the company, and there will be many: customer support, billing, compliance, marketing and legal, just to name a few. There will also be many deadlines, simply because huge numbers of people have to coordinate to turn out a complicated project. > As a corporate user of software I have waited similar lengths of time for features I really wanted. Again, unless you are signing the purchase order, you're not the customer, and you don't set the deadlines. Someone else is setting the deadlines for you. Also, just because you had to wait a long time doesn't mean that deadlines didn't exist for the project. > This is why it's better for execs to treat bespoke deliveries as something radioactive All software projects are bespoke. Some are smaller and more tightly scoped than others, but if you didn't need custom work done, you wouldn't pay an engineer to do it.
- pydry 4y ago
  >Not the kind of feature I'm talking about I know. I expressly declared the type of feature you were talking about radioactive. The tragedy isnt that this type of feature exists it's that some managers cant conceive of there being any other kind and will turn every feature radioactive. Thats how we get shit software.