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peter banana posted:There's a new methodology for developing education material that's meant to rival ADDIE called SAM which is meant to adopt the iterative design principles of Agile. It's pretty cool, I imagine if I ever worked in a team developing content I would like it. But attaching it to such a specific time frame is ridiculous and clearly shows the PM has no idea about how to develop educational content. Particularly when it's not your SME's main function. It's really easy and natural to adapt AGILE to e-learning or course development, but you have to understand the point, not the specifics. Standing up in meetings does not mean you will finish your sprint faster. But doing things in small pieces and constantly reviewing/revising is how you avoid situations like the one I'm in. No, after I've edited and finalized a video is NOT the time to review it to make sure the SME got everything right. Maybe outlining the content before shooting like I suggested would be a better time?
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Aug 8, 2014 15:41
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It seems like Agile can be distilled into "break projects up into small tasks and have the small tasks reviewed on completion so errors can be caught early." Focusing on all the window dressing of fancy titles for people and meetings, having to stand up, etc just seems like cargo cult project management. Also you guys are depressing me with your dress code talk. I went to grad school right out of undergrad and I think I'd go crazy if I had to dress up for work more than like twice a year.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:35
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I enjoy dressing nicely for work most of the time. A button down and some nice dress pants makes me feel like a million bucks. Days like today where I'm worn out and ready for the weekend call for jeans and a golf shirt. I'm glad I have the freedom to do what I want.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:40
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Shear Modulus posted:It seems like Agile can be distilled into "break projects up into small tasks and have the small tasks reviewed on completion so errors can be caught early." Focusing on all the window dressing of fancy titles for people and meetings, having to stand up, etc just seems like cargo cult project management. Exactly. But management tends to focus on the culty aspects as proof they're doing it right. "We use Agile methodology look he is called SCRUM Master and we stand up! I own a book!
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Aug 8, 2014 16:41
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detectivemonkey posted:Exactly. But management tends to focus on the culty aspects as proof they're doing it right. "We use Agile methodology look he is called SCRUM Master and we stand up! I own a book! This is pretty much how any management theory ends up being implemented. LOOK HOW MUCH WE'RE IMPLEMENTING THIS! *Doesn't actually do poo poo* Then on their performance report, they can say they successfully implemented XYZ Flavor of The Month management principle, increasing Metric A, B, and C by %%. (If you can't make your metrics look like they're improving even as the company is being driven into the ground, you have no business in management.)
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Aug 8, 2014 16:58
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The standup meetings at my job are about an hour long, sitting down in a boardroom, and it drives me insaaaaane
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Aug 8, 2014 17:09
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I found out today that we do have a dress code, but actions by our ultimate masters have basically made it unenforceable as the union has said they will grieve the poo poo out of them on any attempt to enforce it.
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Aug 8, 2014 17:31
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sbaldrick posted:I found out today that we do have a dress code, but actions by our ultimate masters have basically made it unenforceable as the union has said they will grieve the poo poo out of them on any attempt to enforce it. You mean the beige isn't mandatory? 
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Aug 8, 2014 17:32
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The Grammar Aryan posted:Oh, I love it when orgs try to adopt an Agile workflow when it isn't right or when they completely gently caress up the concept. Companies that gently caress up their agile workflow make me sad. My company, at times, has hosed up this workflow, but we have people who are vocal enough to let us know we are loving up the implementation. I have so many things to say about scrum since I work as a scrum master. There are lots of fuckups, but the biggest are those SMs who just go through the motions rather than try to continually improve on how to help the team. They're focused entirely on the process and forget that we're really just trying to help the team. Going back to dress code chat and the mentality that comes with wearing business formal/casual, Jerry Rice is famously quoted as saying that if his uniform didn't fit right and if he didn't feel like he looked good in it, he would feel like he couldn't perform at his highest level.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:11
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FrozenVent posted:You mean the beige isn't mandatory? From my understanding is the giant tattoos and things that have shown up on our Masters because have called into question a dress code. No one has pushed it so far.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:56
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Email at 5:05 on a Friday from a client "Hi I wanted to quickly touch base on a rather urgent-" Nope, not going to happen.
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Aug 8, 2014 22:10
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As long as I'm allowed to wear short sleeves I'll be okay, I have tops that are comfortable enough. I get hot very easily and sometimes long sleeves just feel too confining. I'm spoiled now though because I am allowed to wear capris to work, short pants are the best pants, and also I can wear sneakers every day. I have low arches, weirdly shaped feet, and am prone to plantar fasciitis (feet hurt due to inflammation of connective tissue) so I don't take kindly to most footwear. I'll have to see what kind of loafer-like shoes I have and then swap out my little Dr Scholl's-type inserts every day. But getting new pants will hurt my feeble little finances big time. Pants are drat expensive.Xandu posted:Email at 5:05 on a Friday from a client Ha, I hate this crap. If it was that urgent, they would have called you before quittin time for the weekend. Never give them an inch on this poo poo either because then it becomes expected instead of a one-time exception, and then suddenly Butthurt will ensue.
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Aug 9, 2014 03:21
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Xandu posted:Email at 5:05 on a Friday from a client Monday "Hi, sorry about that. I had some prior obligations etc. etc. etc. etc." And then some note about moving forward, being more proactive (in the most professional manner) about alerting you to things like this earlier rather than on Friday afternoon.
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Aug 9, 2014 03:49
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peter banana posted:There's a new methodology for developing education material that's meant to rival ADDIE called SAM which is meant to adopt the iterative design principles of Agile. It's pretty cool, I imagine if I ever worked in a team developing content I would like it. But attaching it to such a specific time frame is ridiculous and clearly shows the PM has no idea about how to develop educational content. Particularly when it's not your SME's main function. No, North Carolina. It does my heart good to know that people completely misunderstanding methodologies is universal. Also, all sprints were headed up by one person, who was the scrum master, PM, SME, and supervisor for all staff assigned to that sprint. Staff were assigned seemingly randomly between projects, with some staff assigned to multiple sprints at once. One poor intern had to have his time sheet signed by three people once. Having been at places that try to implement Agile, or pop in and out of it as PMs try to look useful, I've found that how they deal with scrums is a good metric for how well it works. Short, 10-minute max meetings? Gonna go great. Can't sit down, and the PM demands that the meeting be used to resolve issues brought up in the meeting? Gonna be a bad time.
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Aug 9, 2014 13:39
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Ottoman posted:Ha, I hate this crap. If it was that urgent, they would have called you before quittin time for the weekend. Never give them an inch on this poo poo either because then it becomes expected instead of a one-time exception, and then suddenly Butthurt will ensue. At my old job we worked 9 hour days M-Th and worked half days every Friday. We had a subcontractor we didn't get along with very well who liked to be extremely passive aggressive and would try to schedule meetings for Friday afternoons whenever they got particularly pissy. Most of the time they didn't get their way but they sometimes forced us into unpaid OT to sit there and listen to them whine on the phone for an hour.
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Aug 9, 2014 16:23
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:At my old job we worked 9 hour days M-Th and worked half days every Friday. We had a subcontractor we didn't get along with very well who liked to be extremely passive aggressive and would try to schedule meetings for Friday afternoons whenever they got particularly pissy. Most of the time they didn't get their way but they sometimes forced us into unpaid OT to sit there and listen to them whine on the phone for an hour. Hell, in jobs with standard M-F hours people get pissed when meetings are scheduled for Friday afternoons, much less when you're not even being paid for it.
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Aug 10, 2014 18:31
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The only sensical time management / attendance rule at my old job was that meetings were to be scheduled to start between 9:30 and 15:00 at the latest, with nothing on Friday afternoon or Monday morning. Which led to hilarity the one time there was a teleconference at 17:00.
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Aug 10, 2014 18:47
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It is UNACCEPTABLE that so many tickets have been reassigned to the wrong department and management will hold EACH AND EVERY PERSON ACCOUNTABLE for each incorrectly assigned ticket. No verbal or written warning (as per company policy company policy), Director and employee goes straight to a coaching meeting with HR. Just look at this report showing all of the mistakes made that we ran! *~80% of mistakes are made by an outside department we have no power over* *~10% of mistakes are made by a single temp who is a known moron, yet is invincible as he's the nephew of one of the most powerful men in the company* *~10% of mistakes are legitimately made by the rest of the 26 people in my department* My manager is a loving spineless lapdog to my Director, which is how they get away with pulling poo poo like this on us. I can't believe the amount of time and energy they're expending getting people in trouble when the issue doesn't lie with us, can be resolved with an afternoon of fixing our ticketing system, and is also the smallest problem we're facing in the entire department. When a ticket gets assigned to the wrong region, the total impact is *someone gets an e-mail they shouldn't get* and there's a god drat witch hunt going on. I've seen management threaten everyone before, but never anything to this level. Really I can't do anything but laugh at this point. I haven't made said mistake for well over a year, so I'm just watching the fireworks.
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Aug 10, 2014 23:16
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Nocheez posted:I enjoy dressing nicely for work most of the time. A button down and some nice dress pants makes me feel like a million bucks. As do I. I also enjoy working with people that look like they are here to work and not hang out and play video games. I got an engineer mad at me one time because he wanted to meet a customer and I told him that I would never introduce anyone in the company with pizza on his Margaritaville tshirt. gently caress that dude. I'm in Marketing but I do field support for key customers. I wear appropriate gear in the field which can mean waders and swamp pants and boots, whatever. But in the office I wear office attire. Get serious about where you are and whats appropriate. I'm in a nice shirt and slacks, shined shoes, can you wear a goddamn polo or something jfc this isn't your backyard barbeque. I hate not having some sort of minimal dress code. loving animals in their death metal shirts on the production floor goddamn.
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Aug 11, 2014 01:59
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Aristotle Animes posted:I hate not having some sort of minimal dress code. loving animals in their death metal shirts on the production floor goddamn. ah yes tell us more how blue collar workers are animals 
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Aug 11, 2014 03:10
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Yeah that's definitely what he said, good callout. A+
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Aug 11, 2014 03:41
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When did engineers become blue collar workers?
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Aug 11, 2014 06:22
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Aristotle Animes posted:As do I. I also enjoy working with people that look like they are here to work and not hang out and play video games. I got an engineer mad at me one time because he wanted to meet a customer and I told him that I would never introduce anyone in the company with pizza on his Margaritaville tshirt. gently caress that dude. I'm in Marketing but I do field support for key customers. I wear appropriate gear in the field which can mean waders and swamp pants and boots, whatever. But in the office I wear office attire. Get serious about where you are and whats appropriate. I'm in a nice shirt and slacks, shined shoes, can you wear a goddamn polo or something jfc this isn't your backyard barbeque. I'm going to steal your lunch money and give you a swirly, nerd. There is no reason to have a real dress code if you aren't meeting customers.
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Aug 11, 2014 06:32
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Renegret posted:Really I can't do anything but laugh at this point. I haven't made said mistake for well over a year, so I'm just watching the fireworks. It is nice seeing you reach the part where you no longer give a gently caress what happens, it is a zen place to be. Don't stay to long, your ambition will fall asleep as well. fits my needs posted:When did engineers become blue collar workers? I was going to tell you guys hilarious stories about Agile/SCRUM implementations but you touched most parts: - SCRUM in name only - stand-ups that take hours while sitting down because all issues need to be resolved - Cargo-cult behavior from higher management. I hate this last one most. "If we implement SCRUM, our process will be so much faster!" Sounds like my ex-wife who used to say things like "If only I get myself X, I will be happy." It does not work like that, if a company is successful, it often is no matter what method is used and the other way round as well. The good thing about SCRUM is the very clear measurement of velocity. Example: if you have a project planning that says a team should deliver 100 units of work over 10 weeks and after 2 weeks 5 were delivered, how can they in the remaining 8 weeks deliver 12 per week, more then double the current amount? I have to ask this question to my delivery teams every project and every time they tell me it will be alright. Then I ask what it is they will do to double productivity and they hesitate because they don't really know. Are you adding people, push the existing team to work 80 hours a week, magically have them produce twice as much or will you run into a delay and you were only planning to tell me one week before the deadline? Eventually it turns out they oversold their capability to deliver and now my project is suffering. There should be the possibility to put into a contract that the sales person doing this can be flogged publicly, or his sales bonus taken, which he prefers. I think it will give us much more reliable series of bids and sales people with massive scars on their back.
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Aug 11, 2014 08:03
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Magic Underwear posted:I'm going to steal your lunch money and give you a swirly, nerd. There is no reason to have a real dress code if you aren't meeting customers.
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Aug 11, 2014 12:31
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Magic Underwear posted:I'm going to steal your lunch money and give you a swirly, nerd. There is no reason to have a real dress code if you aren't meeting customers. In fairness to the poster, he complained that his colleague wanted to meet customers while dressed like poo poo.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:16
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I think we can all agree there's an area between button down shirt and tie and death metal shirts. Personally I prefer to be more comfortable at work but still look presentable. I liked being able to wear jeans to work mostly because I had significantly more pocket space and I could go down to the production floor and not worry about getting dirty since jeans can be washed a lot more easily than a lot of dress pants. You'll always have the people who way over- or under-dress though.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:52
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Keetron posted:It is nice seeing you reach the part where you no longer give a gently caress what happens, it is a zen place to be. Don't stay to long, your ambition will fall asleep as well. I like my job  It's just that it would do the department a whole lot of good if my manager took a long walk off of a short cliff, and the person who replaced him had a backbone. I at least wanted to be fully vested in my 401k before I went looking for another job, but that's another two years out. At least I can move around internally, which is my goal anyway. This is a good company to work for, it's just my direct management is...lacking in competency. Renegret fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 14:11
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Magic Underwear posted:I'm going to steal your lunch money and give you a swirly, nerd. There is no reason to have a real dress code if you aren't meeting customers. Yeah but as stated before, setting an expectation for professional dress in all circumstances (dirty or unsafe environments excepted, of course) regardless of whether an employee is externally* customer-facing or not helps breed a professional mindset and culture. Sure it might feel nice to roll into work in pajamas or whatever happened to be clean that day and be totally laid back or what not, but more often than not over time it leads to a culture of lax attitudes, loose management and a general tolerance for error. Having worked in places like that, I have no desire to do so ever again just so I can wear jeans or something. Before that I was anti-dress codes too, before I saw how the lack of expectations for professional appearance bred poor results--at all levels. *a better way to look at it is that everyone is your customer and that co-workers, managers and executives are just as much customers of an employee as any outside client. HiroProtagonist fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 15:05
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Can I just make a public statement? If you have a weird name and you call me on the phone, if you spell out your name without me asking, you are my god drat hero. Thank you for preventing the awkwardness.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:19
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Keetron posted:It is nice seeing you reach the part where you no longer give a gently caress what happens, it is a zen place to be. Don't stay to long, your ambition will fall asleep as well. I'd personally love to hear about hilariously failed scrum implementations. They're always fascinating and a great case of corporate middle management misunderstanding an entire methodology.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:53
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We do our morning stand-ups with an international conference call sitting down at our desks, so we get a combination of the best of open concept offices with the best of pretending to not understand what the words "stand" and "up" mean. Also they take about 45 minutes for seven people. At a previous company we had a 44 person (actual) stand-up that took an hour and a half. I had to wear a knee brace the next day. The PM on that project also kept two different burn down charts (one for management and one for reality-based individuals) which led to us getting more insane demands since we were "going to finish so soon!" Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 20:46
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Renegret posted:Can I just make a public statement? Counterpoint: If you have a weird name, say the name first before spelling it out, don't just start telling me letters out of nowhere. "My name is John Zdunczyk, Z-D-U-N-C-Z-Y-K" Awesome! "My name is John Z-D-U-N-C-Z-Y-K" What?
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Aug 11, 2014 23:06
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I usually go "My name is FrozenVent; would you like me to spell that?"
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Aug 11, 2014 23:08
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Counterpoint: Another counterpoint: Chances are if you call my department, I pick up and you recognize me, I probably recognize you too. No need to introduce yourself and your job title every time. And after the 20th time, I probably know how to spell Zdunczyk too. And if I don't, I have a special text file just for you so I don't have to keep asking. (I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU VARGHESE...and that one Indian dude who quit a year ago so I completely forgot his name already) We have this guy who will formally introduce himself with full name + job title, but his voice is so distinctive he just has to say "hi" and every single person in my department would know who it is. He knows this but still insist on using his full 10+ second long self identification speech for whatever reason I don't know. Sure I have to speak to every single tech in the company, but there's only about 50 of them and turnaround is very, very low. After a while you start to remember everyone. I don't work in a call center, my job simply involves picking up the phone a lot. FrozenVent posted:I usually go "My name is FrozenVent; would you like me to spell that?" I just spell it without asking if I know it's really important. My last name isn't terribly hard to spell, but I guess my accent makes it harder than it has to be. "Hi name is Ren Egret. E-G-R-E-T." If you can't spell my first name without help, I don't know what to say to you. I usually don't give my last name out at work though, my first name is generally enough.
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Aug 11, 2014 23:57
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I always spell out my name if I know the person on the other end of the phone has to type it out. My maiden name was only 5 letters long and spelled phonetically but people STILL hosed it up all the time. My married name is even shorter and also spelled phonetically and yet it still gets hosed up. Neither name is common so I give people a pass. I have a standard common first name so people usually get that one right at least. As for the people who spell it out every time, it's probably just ingrained habit from having "can you spell that?" being the followup question every time they give their name.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:26
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:As for the people who spell it out every time, it's probably just ingrained habit from having their name spelled wrong every. single. loving. time. that they don't spell it out. ftfy.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:54
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Seat Safety Switch posted:We do our morning stand-ups with an international conference call sitting down at our desks, so we get a combination of the best of open concept offices with the best of pretending to not understand what the words "stand" and "up" mean. What the gently caress is a stand up
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Aug 12, 2014 01:22
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sbaldrick posted:What the gently caress is a stand up It's just an update meeting basically. Supposed to be short, though, hence the stand-up.
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Aug 12, 2014 01:24
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It's the only part of agile/scrum that all my "agile" employers have actually adopted. We don't actually follow scrum, so they don't call it a scrum. You're supposed to stand up during it so as to inspire you to cut it short. The theory is, it's a daily meeting that's supposed to be like < 1 minute updates per person: what are you up to, what's blocking you, what are you going to do next? Of course it turns into a "let's solve every problem on this ridiculously expensive all-hands call even though 99% of the people here don't give a poo poo" daily pissing match.
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Aug 12, 2014 01:32
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