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sbaldrick posted:What the gently caress is a stand up quote:Each day during the sprint, a project team communication meeting occurs. This is called a Daily Scrum (meeting) and has specific guidelines: The standup meetings at my current job are ~ 60-90 minutes long and involve sitting in a boardroom. They make me want to kill myself.
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Aug 12, 2014 01:34
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Shadowhand00 posted: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. Let's see, at my current job, we have a) Daily "stand-up" meetings where everyone is sitting down that take like forty five minutes... Check. b) Retrospective meetings after each sprint that take an hour and a half... Check. c) Planning meetings that take two hours... Check. d) Three hour long sprint demo which everyone is supposed to attend in person... Check. Keep in mind that are sprints are two weeks long. In addition, as a lead developer(!!!), I have the following meetings: a) One hour long weekly UI meeting that I don't go to... Check. b) One hour long weekly bug grooming meeting... Check. c) Two hour long pre-planning meeting... Check. Let's see, let me point out some other essential problems: a) We have fixed release dates, and fixed features scheduled for these sprints. b) No real unit testing - some people write tests, some don't. c) No formal process of code review. d) Twelve offshore developers who never ask questions. e) A loving horrible legacy code base we have to be compatible with. It's basically like Sex House but for medical software development.
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Aug 12, 2014 01:47
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Seat Safety Switch posted: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. We just tried this idea in our group's meetings since a lot of the older staff have a tendancy to go on and on about the minutiae of their projects...it did not in fact go faster. It just made standing through their minute to minute replay of the week all the more awkward.
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Aug 12, 2014 02:01
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Blindeye posted:We just tried this idea in our group's meetings since a lot of the older staff have a tendancy to go on and on about the minutiae of their projects...it did not in fact go faster. It just made standing through their minute to minute replay of the week all the more awkward. It totally works as long as you have someone sane who keeps people on track. It's even better when you do it from your desk and have a 30-60 second timer to report everything or you get cut off (unless there's a very good reason for going over).
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Aug 12, 2014 02:08
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:It totally works as long as you have someone sane who keeps people on track. It's even better when you do it from your desk and have a 30-60 second timer to report everything or you get cut off (unless there's a very good reason for going over). By that measure if we just had the timer or a manager that could rein people in we'd be in good shape. The new guy is...very talented technically, but not exactly a people management kind of guy. He's the type that if he does get in on something, like say editing a report, he will just straight up rewrite the whole thing entirely. Our old manager used to have meetings where he'd give the status of work coming in, reports and goals making the rounds (with feedback from us) then have us send him a few bullet points of what's going on last week and what's planned this week. It worked wonderfully, which is why we aren't doing it now. vv Eh maybe I can see standups working but we all get cc'd on every finalized report, we all are updated of the status of projects as they progress, and we all have full staff meetings for the really important stuff, so in the balance the stand-up meetings provide little to no information I need. Blindeye fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 02:15
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My old manager went on leave and the person who replaced him got rid of our stand up meetings in favor of just stopping by everyone's desk once or twice a day. I guess it works, but I definitely feel less in the loop on things and it definitely interrupts my actual work to have someone randomly drop by for updates.
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Aug 12, 2014 02:19
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Our staff meeting were a huge kabuki theatre of time wasting.
FrozenVent fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 02:24
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:The standup meetings at my current job are ~ 60-90 minutes long and involve sitting in a boardroom. They make me want to kill myself. I've rarely seen them be effective - they always go over time by a significant order of magnitude.
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Aug 12, 2014 02:47
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My time on them alone is costing my employer somewhere around $500-800/week. This is beyond the spreadsheets I have to fill out before and after each sprint, the confluence site I have to keep up to date daily, and the jira site I have to log all my issues in (the last one is great though, jira owns).
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Aug 12, 2014 03:20
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At my last job, we had stand up meetings that would involve some people rambling, until I took it upon myself to let everyone know that I would be the jerk who would start pointing at my watch and clearing my throat when someone went over. It helped a lot. Of course, this only worked because the PM running the meeting was chill, and everyone knew what I was doing ahead of time and was OK with it. If you have a job where being squeaky wheel isn't going to get you written up, try being that jerk.
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Aug 12, 2014 03:43
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sbaldrick posted:What the gently caress is a stand up I do proposal management work and for me, a stand up is a short (15 mins) conference call every day at a set time during proposal generation to check on the status of writing and/or pending action items. Same concept as Agile, but I emphasize the short nature of them to encourage the mandatory attendance. I usually stop the call at 15 minutes unless there are critical decisions being made. It's a standard mechanic in the proposal development process though.
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Aug 12, 2014 03:54
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:Let's see, at my current job, we have Could have sworn you work for Epic, but I see no posts in the madgoons thread. 80% of my work there was meetings, prepping for meetings, and sending out reports about meetings. The rest was tech stuff that all could have been easily scripted were I not in meetings.
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Aug 12, 2014 03:59
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We changed our department meeting from a soul sucking sit around a table and everyone go down the line talking about their work to monthly drinks at a local bar (starting at 4). We had to suffer through a day of offsite team building run by an old guy contractor who made us draw inane posters to get there but I'm gonna call this a net win.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:26
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Hahaha, I think I have all of you guys beat. Two years ago my group would have MWF hour long stand ups with around five different departments (around 50ish people). Upper management wanted to make sure we were taking a hands on approach, so they moved to meetings to the inside of the uninsulated jumbo jets parked outside our building. This was in the loving winter! And yes, when the wind blows they rock like crazy. And half the time some rear end in a top hat left the cargo doors open >.<
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Aug 12, 2014 05:13
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:Let's see, at my current job, we have Holy poo poo, I'm sorry to hear about that. That's pretty ridiculous. I work for one of the many online insurance companies and we're in the middle of an agile transition. I'm a scrum master so I'm responsible for a lot of poo poo that goes on, but here goes: 1. We stick to 15 minute stand ups. I don't ask you what you did yesterday. I just want to make sure I know what you're planning on doing today and whether you have a plan for it. I will cut you short if you start rambling. 2. We do retrospectives that last about an hour - hour and a half. We get specific action items and we make sure we implement that for the next sprint. If the idea was bad, we go back and decide on another thing to change to see whether we improve. 3. Planning meetings take a while if you haven't properly vetted your backlog. Ours take about 2 hours - half the time, we're negotiating and figuring out what the stories are actually about. The other half we spend estimating the stories. They're getting shorter though as more people start to understand what we're supposed to be doing each meeting. 4. We don't really do Sprint Demos. People send out emails and share the poo poo they've been building. Occasionally we'll have a big release meeting but that's when you get to present to execs. The poo poo you have to deal with though - no real unit testing sounds like a nightmare if its half-assed implemented. Code Review without a formal process is a nightmare. The team should be the one figuring out what they can commit to to finish. That's the whole idea. The team's the focus. I don't know - hearing about 45 minute standups is horrifying to me. That poo poo's supposed to 15 minutes and then you have meetings afterwards if you really need to resolve situations. On the other hand, having to deal with a dysfucntional tech lead, product manager, a somewhat overbearing manager (who is leadership for my product but never attends any meetings I invite that person to), and patronizing older developers "who just want to be told what to do" is where my troubles come from.
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Aug 12, 2014 05:24
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Bad Agile is probably almost a thread in and of itself. Agile has so many good processes that can work really well but somehow when they pass through many middle managers they just become the complete opposite due to a complete lack of understanding of what is trying to achieve. And it also has to be said that Agile (even if done right) simply does not work for every project environment, if you have large amounts of external dependencies that can't (or won't) make adjustments to fit your new working schedule you are doomed. Right now what is pissing me off is when people don't understand why concepts like "Fail fast" can be valuable. So, you've got a project and we begin discussing requirements, timeframes, resourcing etc. and it becomes evident that we simply cannot meet them. Now is the time to go back to the drawing board and work out what we can do, don't just say "I want answers not problems", go round me and my team (i.e. the people who know how to do this stuff) and continue on as if you haven't been told it won't work. If you do the above (and if you're an rear end in a top hat PM or Sales guy you will) then when it alls falls apart exactly as predicted you will get zero sympathy and will have a much bigger mess than if we'd addressed it back when we first knew. I mean, if we look at something and say it's impossible to meet the timeframe required for this, it's not because we're lazy or want to annoy you (although I do dearly want to annoy you) it's because it's actually impossible given current constraints.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:16
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HiroProtagonist posted: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. Yup. If you can't get the little things right, like troubling to make a decent appearance, then I don't trust you to get the things that really matter right. Some people make a point of dressing down to give everyone the clear message, hey i don't give a gently caress about you or any of this. Clothes matter and there is a huge amount of leeway here, just stop wearing your stupid tshirts with words on them. This isn't a relaxed environment and I hate whoever started building the expectation that people should relax at work.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:49
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We do a Lean Six Sigma variant at a sister organization that we operate with. I ended up going through their yellow belt training to help with collaborative projects. However, now the trainers are pestering me to come in and earn more belts. To earn more belts you have to do projects. They don't understand that the organization they're being paid by is not my organization and I am not their employee, and that I can't just go into their poo poo and start wrecking up the place. And my organization could give two fucks about Lean Six Sigma so I can't do it here. Also there is no point because having the belt is not helpful in any aspect of my job.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:15
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We have black belts at my job. They are mostly useless mainly because they see everything as black and white with 0 flexibility. It's infuriating to work with them
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Aug 12, 2014 13:19
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Aristotle Animes posted:Yup. If you can't get the little things right, like troubling to make a decent appearance, then I don't trust you to get the things that really matter right. Some people make a point of dressing down to give everyone the clear message, hey i don't give a gently caress about you or any of this. Clothes matter and there is a huge amount of leeway here, just stop wearing your stupid tshirts with words on them. This isn't a relaxed environment and I hate whoever started building the expectation that people should relax at work. I would even go as far as to carry this into going out in public. Yes, I think that it was pretty ridiculous to put on a suit and tie/dress and high heels to go to the grocery store, but now you see people walking around in pajamas. I think we've taken "dressing down" a little bit too far.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:23
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Volmarias posted:At my last job, we had stand up meetings that would involve some people rambling, until I took it upon myself to let everyone know that I would be the jerk who would start pointing at my watch and clearing my throat when someone went over. It helped a lot. Of course, this only worked because the PM running the meeting was chill, and everyone knew what I was doing ahead of time and was OK with it. At my last job, our weekly status meeting consisted of updating an Excel spreadsheet on a shared drive, and then having a conference call where we took turns reading our respective sections of the spreadsheet. When I asked why we were doing this insanely time-wasting exercise, I was told "we've always done it this way."
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Aug 12, 2014 13:26
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Huh, there's a name for those daily meetings that isn't "being micromanaged to death"? At my old job we had daily team meetings usually followed by a 90 minute conference call with a subcontractor so at least two hours of my morning were shot every day. Then they had the gall to wonder why productivity was declining. Then they yelled at us for spending too much time on the phone 
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Aug 12, 2014 13:40
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MightyJoe36 posted:I would even go as far as to carry this into going out in public. Yes, I think that it was pretty ridiculous to put on a suit and tie/dress and high heels to go to the grocery store, but now you see people walking around in pajamas. I think we've taken "dressing down" a little bit too far. But how do you know that you'll get the right ketchup if you aren't in the right mindset? You might get store brand by accident!  I'm glad that you're both nowhere near any organization I work at. A formal dress code when your employees aren't going to see external customers or uptight upper management is just going to make them resent you. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 14:01
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Lowness 72 posted:We have black belts at my job. They are mostly useless mainly because they see everything as black and white with 0 flexibility. It's infuriating to work with them Also they are obsessed with goddamn flip charts.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:35
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I was in a 9 hour meeting yesterday that I had no business being in. The lady who puts on the meeting always gets lots of food and brings toys to the meeting for some reason. Included in the mix is that drat "Easy" button. I hate this loving poo poo. I wish I was dead. All they do is gently caress things up, polish the turd, and self congratulate. She got a bunch of Rubik's Cubes last time and I've been spending my time at the meetings working on that instead of contributing. Don't want me playing with the puzzle? Don't bring it, and don't invite me to a meeting where all I do is tech your lovely use of Excel once every two hours. I've been asking for resources to do my job for the past year. Namely SSRS to eliminate vast swaths of data entry that is done by hand in my department. IT refuses to give it to me and insists that I must be trained. I wrote a nasty letter explaining my history with SQL, programming, "teaching this poo poo at conferences", and how I don't need training. Response back was "Okay, sounds like you know what you are doing, but we still need to train you on it." I put it in my calendar to quit on September 2nd. I'm done trying. I don't care. I am a hollow husk of a once ambitious person. Thank god for some meager savings to help float me for a few months.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:37
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Naming the Six Sigma certification levels after karate belts to try and make it cool is the dumbest thing. It's even dumber than calling your software guys .Net Ninjas or whatever.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:40
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Oh my god, I actually thought it was karate. One of my upper level managers has it in his signature for his e-mails. 
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Aug 12, 2014 15:44
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I'm not sure if ninja is better or worse than my current job title, which is basically "Data Resource"
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Aug 12, 2014 15:53
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Chicken Doodle posted:Oh my god, I actually thought it was karate. One of my upper level managers has it in his signature for his e-mails. I wish it was karate. To get my yellow belt, I had to sit in an all day 'leadership' class where we did group activities like we were in kindergarten. My favorite was where we all had to eat different flavored jellybeans and then tally how much of each flavor we had and make a graph to emphasize the difficulty of data collection. (I wish I was kidding). However, one of the people from my org that was taking the classes with me has MS, and due to a recent flare had lost her sense of taste. She valiantly guessed at various random flavors while we all died laughing behind the instructor and she threatened to kill us with hand gestures under the table.
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Aug 12, 2014 16:05
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:I'm not sure if ninja is better or worse than my current job title, which is basically "Data Resource" Well, one is the company trying to motivate you to work harder by hamfistedly trying to make your job sound cooler than it is and the other is an honest expression of how the company doesn't acknowledge you as a person. I guess which one is worse depends on whether you're more insulted by being talked down to or outright dismissal.
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Aug 12, 2014 16:06
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:I'm not sure if ninja is better or worse than my current job title, which is basically "Data Resource" "Table Molester"
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Aug 12, 2014 16:26
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19 o'clock posted:I was in a 9 hour meeting yesterday that I had no business being in. The lady who puts on the meeting always gets lots of food and brings toys to the meeting for some reason. Included in the mix is that drat "Easy" button. I hate this loving poo poo. I wish I was dead. All they do is gently caress things up, polish the turd, and self congratulate. A nine-hour meeting? How do you possibly think you're going to hold anyone's attention for that long?
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Aug 12, 2014 16:41
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MightyJoe36 posted:A nine-hour meeting? How do you possibly think you're going to hold anyone's attention for that long? I would have been climbing up the walls and calling for an agenda every ten minutes, holy poo poo.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:10
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So a stand-up meeting is basically something the Japanese created as part of the manufacturing process and Americans made stupid and worse. No wonder I couldn't understand it.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:12
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Shear Modulus posted:Naming the Six Sigma certification levels after karate belts to try and make it cool is the dumbest thing. It's even dumber than calling your software guys .Net Ninjas or whatever. Javascript Ninja. For the longest time, I was looking for the javascript ninja because I had seen the job listing on our website. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone ever applied for that position. sbaldrick posted:So a stand-up meeting is basically something the Japanese created as part of the manufacturing process and Americans made stupid and worse. No wonder I couldn't understand it. If you want to see the HBR article about this - http://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game/ quote:Under the old approach, a product development process moved like a relay race, with one group of functional specialists passing the baton to the next group. The project went sequentially from phase to phase: concept development, feasibility testing, product design, development process, pilot production, and final production. Under this method, functions were specialized and segmented: the marketing people examined customer needs and perceptions in developing product concepts; the R&D engineers selected the appropriate design; the production engineers put it into shape; and other functional specialists carried the baton at different stages of the race. I imagine this is where most people's projects fail anyway. quote:Under the rugby approach, the product development process emerges from the constant interaction of a hand-picked, multidisciplinary team whose members work together from start to finish. Rather than moving in defined, highly structured stages, the process is born out of the team members’ interplay (see Exhibit 1). A group of engineers, for example, may start to design the product (phase three) before all the results of the feasibility tests (phase two) are in. Or the team may be forced to reconsider a decision as a result of later information. The team does not stop then, but engages in iterative experimentation. This goes on in even the latest phases of the development process. This is pretty much what agile is supposed to do. So really, it was invented by Japanese people, applied by 2 old and somewhat very interesting men, and then codified as Scrum.  Work's been too boring here. Something is going to blow up, I just know it. Shadowhand00 fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 17:17
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Six Sigma is a loving joke at a lot of places it's kind of a joke in general!. If I had a dollar for every time that one of my client contacts says "Oh we did a Six Sigma project on [Incredibly broken process or topic] a few years back but didn't end up making any changes" I would own an island.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:18
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Shadowhand00 posted:Javascript Ninja. For the longest time, I was looking for the javascript ninja because I had seen the job listing on our website. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone ever applied for that position.  Shadowhand00 posted:If you want to see the HBR article about this - http://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game/ 30 years ago, hot drat, and now this poo poo is so hot you can bake an egg on it.
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Aug 12, 2014 20:21
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Keetron posted:He is there, you just cannot see him. If I recall correctly Six Sigma is something that was pitched to American businesses sometime in the 1950s, but rejected outright. So (Deming?) took it to Japan and they embraced it. So, I guess we thought it was crap until it became a Japanese management fad.
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Aug 12, 2014 20:59
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Didn't Six Sigma start at GE?
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Aug 12, 2014 21:01
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MightyJoe36 posted:If I recall correctly Six Sigma is something that was pitched to American businesses sometime in the 1950s, but rejected outright. So (Deming?) took it to Japan and they embraced it. I think this is describing Lean. I'm actually not sure what the difference between lean and 6s is. Lean is all about JIT and eliminating waste through continuous improvement and value stream management/accounting. Wheras all I know about 6s is the impossible namesake goal, and process improvement diagrams. Is there anything else besides that?
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Aug 12, 2014 21:11
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