4 ms·
Breaking down work works great until the breakdown is unknowable. Things like research, that require creative experiments to POC things that are not known aprio
by teeray 3y ago
Breaking down work works great until the breakdown is unknowable. Things like research, that require creative experiments to POC things that are not known apriori. That’s when task breakdown breaks down.
- winwang 3y ago...and then you break out the actuarial models :) And at some point, you just gotta do it.
- al_borland 3y agoAlso when management sees what should be a POC or research as a deliverable they start promising to higher ups and other teams. I’ve developed the habit of doing most of my POC work behind closed doors and telling no one. If it works great, I can release it. If it doesn’t, I can kill it and move on without having to eat crow, or get told I need to figure out a way to make it work after I’ve seen it’s not wise to continue.
- beebmam 3y agoI'm jealous that you have such flexibility at work that you can do POCs behind closed doors!
- throwaway346434 3y agoNah, that's easy to solve. "spend 3 hours on investigating X, 3 on Y, 3 on Z"; and then have a planning session about what to do next. You have 4 outcomes - the first one solves it, the second, the third or none. If it is solvable with mild effort, you have a 50% chance of solving it by attempt 2/6 hours.
- n4r9 3y agoIt sounds like a pretty small problem if you can build a PoC in 3 hours. Sometimes it takes 3 days to get to a point where you have a rough idea of what code changes might be needed.