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Kanban does away with sprints. You promise nothing but to pick tasks from the top of the column. This was a really hard sell for managers. As a developer it me

by nicbou 3y ago

Kanban does away with sprints. You promise nothing but to pick tasks from the top of the column. This was a really hard sell for managers. As a developer it meant a lot less overhead, made up estimates and false promises. Kanban sets priorities, not timelines. However managers really want those.

mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
Kanban allows for critical fixes/features to jump ahead of the line and its obvious what work is getting traded off for later. Kanban also flows very nicely with a CI/CD process where when something is tested and ready to ship, it gets shipped. I believe the essence of agile is these two concepts - shipping working software and lean prioritization. Things getting stuck in a backlog is a good thing because that shows they aren't that important (other things keep skipping ahead) and you aren't building, testing and delivering software that is hardly used. As a manager in my org I'm not driving deadlines, that's the PM and they mostly know what can get done and are reasonable. Its expected that if you keep jumping the line with stuff, other things are delayed. One downside that is concerning is focus time on specific areas of an app for developers and tech debt in those areas. Its like they keep hopping around from tree to tree like a squirrel. People that like long projects where they are 95% of the time building new things and don't have to deal with production issues, bugs, etc. this org and work style isn't for them.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
But a manager might want to have at least a rough estimate of how much something costs before deciding what to buy. That is, they might want to know roughly how long something is going to take before deciding to put it as a high priority item.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  It's not the manager's job to make technical decisions or choices of this nature, or at least it really shouldn't be. The manager should be there to act as an umbrella and protect the engineers from the morons, the technical leadership leads the engineering team, and they make choices on what is high priority to get things done.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    By "management", I meant people including product management. Product management absolutely makes decisions like that.

by nicbou 3y ago

mattbrewsbytes 3y ago

Kanban allows for critical fixes/features to jump ahead of the line and its obvious what work is getting traded off for later. Kanban also flows very nicely with a CI/CD process where when something is tested and ready to ship, it gets shipped. I believe the essence of agile is these two concepts - shipping working software and lean prioritization. Things getting stuck in a backlog is a good thing because that shows they aren't that important (other things keep skipping ahead) and you aren't building, testing and delivering software that is hardly used. As a manager in my org I'm not driving deadlines, that's the PM and they mostly know what can get done and are reasonable. Its expected that if you keep jumping the line with stuff, other things are delayed. One downside that is concerning is focus time on specific areas of an app for developers and tech debt in those areas. Its like they keep hopping around from tree to tree like a squirrel. People that like long projects where they are 95% of the time building new things and don't have to deal with production issues, bugs, etc. this org and work style isn't for them.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

But a manager might want to have at least a rough estimate of how much something costs before deciding what to buy. That is, they might want to know roughly how long something is going to take before deciding to put it as a high priority item.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
It's not the manager's job to make technical decisions or choices of this nature, or at least it really shouldn't be. The manager should be there to act as an umbrella and protect the engineers from the morons, the technical leadership leads the engineering team, and they make choices on what is high priority to get things done.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  By "management", I meant people including product management. Product management absolutely makes decisions like that.