Scrum Got 3 People Fired From A Software Project!
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
- Over my career I've seen many software projects fail spectacularly due to political infighting between team members.
I prefer a simple definition of politics:
- when people tell each other what they want to hear instead of the truth.
I'd like to share the story of a software project I worked on, where the client was a non-profit company with a big budget.
They wanted to redesign a major application used to help struggling educational institutions.
But the staff were inexperienced with agile.
And multiple contractors on the project were fighting.
In this video, I share how inexperience with software development processes can actually get people fired.
Especially when there's politics.
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Have you ever been on a project where people were fired for symptoms instead of the root cause? Let me know your stories about political infighting on software projects.
The _company_ I worked for went into administration because their software was left to get in such a state that it would have been better to start from scratch in .net than work on the 10 year old delphi program, because the owner of the company didn't belive in QA, and that any bugs would be found by the customers.
@@thelogster ouch!!! Just goes to show how important it is that leadership start listening to the people who actually build their products instead of shooting from the hip with their processes...
I was hired on to be lead on the entire backup scope over the network. 2 weeks there Everyone liked me and did my job well.
An ex co worker friend of mine called me and we started to speak korean.
Right away I was given super angry looks with malice and words used like pedophilia and the like and I was fired.
As if speaking Korean infers any ideology of any sort. Small minds speak only 1 language.
@@inachu WTF! Are you serious? That's ridiculous!
I worked for a non-profit to Design and Build a CMS and they made a Graphic Designer my manager for the project even though he had no coding experience, I dual majored in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. After I finished the alpha demo of the project he took credit for it so I left the company. A week later I got an email from him asking me to finish and release the project with his name on the copy right line, I was allowed to keep the copyright to the code because I was doing it as a side project pro bono to keep their costs down. I forwarded the email to his boss and he lost his job, non profits are super cut throat and overly political.
My advice to any new developer out there: As a software developer you probably get paid pretty well. If you keep your expenses down, even though you have a good job, and invest smartly and save up as much as you possibly can, you will reach the point of financial independence in a very short amount of time. When you are at that point you can decide to leave a job at any moment if the work environment is intolerable, even if you don't have a new job lined up.
To put it in another way: When you start working, don't go out and buy an expensive car and a big house, just because you think you can afford it. Save up and buy your freedom FIRST. When you have that you can save up more money and gradually increase your living standard. Just make sure that you don't pick up any spending habits that can't be sustained from the yield of your investments.
I would pay a million bucks if someone could build a time machine and send this message to myself back when I was starting out as a programmer. Arh... Never mind. The younger me probably wouldn't listen.
This is good advice here folks, though easier to hear than to heed!!
Yes this is indeed the solution. Stop spending start saving. This is what the FIRE Movement is all about.
"Arh... Never mind. The younger me probably wouldn't listen." -
Great Quote, because it captures human nature. Capitalism BTW counts on the fact that people will in fact act irrationally, it depends on the "worker bee" - AKA the "wage slave" to continue to function. As soon as you fix all the bugs (read: "working as designed features") of capitalism, you will have essentially destroyed capitalism. People like Dave Ramsey that advocate for 0 DEBT, living within your means, an all cash society, are (inadvertently?) teaching people how to destroy capitalism, since as Richard Wolff points out in his eloquent treatise on capitalism as an economic system "a cure for capitalism", capitalism is inherently unstable, and in many cases has it's own self-destruction built into it. One example of this is how large companies must keep growing (forever) to survive (keep raising share prices), as they get bigger and bigger, their need for ever increasing share price becomes a futile endeavor, as the growth trajectory becomes asymptotic. That's precisely when companies start cooking the books, or when for example mortgage company CEO's like Wells Fargo's ousted CEO start perpetrating outright fraud on consumers, and so on and so on. In the meantime the average person is caught in the crossfire. Societally speaking, we're long overdue for the guillotines to come out.
Could you point clueless folks like me to where we can learn more about investing? I get saving, but investing seems like something, well, investors do; not ordinary people.
@@verified_tinker1818 two resources I can recommend are "our rich journey" CZcams channel, which generally describes the FIRE movement, and ramit sethi's book " I will teach you to be rich"
That's why I developed this quote, and always tell this to my colleagues
"You don't have to worry about the technical skilled people, worry about the non-technical, you don't know what skills they have, that got them to where they are"
This quote I made up, basically meant, people over time, develops diff. set of skills to survive (the industry).
Leadership, Empathy, Positioning, Politics, Credit Grabbing, Manipulation, etc
Looks like the "Big 4" are masters.
That's a very profound quote.
This quote can be applied to so many office experiences I've had. Very well observed.
What do you mean by big 4? been self employed, rarely seen that.
@@cupcake-gameclip5129 actually I think Big 4 in this instance are the Big 4 accounting and consulting firms - Deloitte, PWC, EY & KPMG.
Piece of advice- Read 48 Laws of Power. You must know those skills as they will get you further than your Technical Skills - You can be unstoppable with both
this obsession with stand up meetings and agile ruined the joy of software dev.
Some people would rather be in charge of an absolute shitshow instead of merely participating in a success.
most people
Office politics has to be one of the strangest human behaviors. Inexperienced with office politics, I made some bad decisions dealing with it at one job, and finally quit. At my next job, that I did not care much for, I took up observing, like a researcher, office politics. That was an eye opener. People are nuts. So petty. Just nuts. The root cause has to be the many thousands of years we humans were confined to nomadic or village tribes. Back then someone's use of the equivalent of blue ink versus black might have mattered.
For real. Attach money to individual rewards and you get all kinds of crazy 🤣
You MUST keep a private Stakeholders Register
I don't think it has anything to do with many thousands of years. People used to be able to work together because they all had their responsibilities and everyone knew it. It's NOW that people are trying to get rich without actually taking any responsibility or accomplishing anything.
Actually its just because in modern society killing idiots is frowned upon. A thousand years ago that wasnt a problem. Someone annoys you, you have a wooden club or whatever, with some spikes on it. Problem, meet solution. People wouldnt do petty shit if they knew they could get their skulls bashed in. The issue is lack of consequences. Immediate physical consequences.
@resigned liberal in my experience the psychopath usually is the manager. in fact they are usually appointed to the manager role solely because they are horrible people and wont mind firing anyone and shouting at people to work harder and generally being terrible and making everyone around them feel terrible.
and if you step on their dick by talking back to them or god forbid, having a better idea every once in a while, it doesnt matter how good you are, youre going. best option is just to quit these companies asap because the business owner will always take his pet psycho's side.
After being in a few Scrum projects I used to try to actively avoid any projects that used it. In my experience Scrum, without exception, will turn a project into a completely dysfunctional and toxic mess, since it is mainly used to micro-manage developers. Unfortunately the whole IT business has been drinking the Agile kool-aid now, so there's no escaping the Scrum hellscape. Sucks to be a developer nowadays.
💯💯
"I drove right into the client" thats one way to handle it lol
🤣
I quit an IT career that spanned 30 years because of Scrum/Agile... _not looking back!_
haha, I'm bailing out from development after 22 years, because of Agile/scrum (and it's ugly sister "Personal Development Plans"). Hate it hate it! ...only looking forward!
@@stephenwall9036 Agile is some bullshit. What are you doing now?
I am also curious what both of yall are doing now.
@@LargerThanCats yeah, give us hope guys!
Are you the kind of guys I have to thank for the 'legacy' code? XD
I could write a book about political infighting in my last company! First, the QA manager for testing our database product (we made an RDBMS plus tools) came in knowing literally nothing about databases. Nothing. Even simple things like why databases have indexes were completely beyond him. The reason this person became QA manager was because he had a Godfather who was an EVP and also brother--in-law. This guy could have set fire to the lobby and it would have been cleaned up.
Second issue - our Development manager was a pint-sized, $39.95 TJ Maxx-dressed person with severe control issues. She liked to stress Professionalism, whereas I'd rather work with the programmer in jeans and a "Your village called, their idiot is missing" t-shirt who knew the product intimately than the person who came in wearing a 3-piece suit and had written "Hello, world!" as his sole technical accomplishment.
Add in a company environment where personal learning, development and initiative were treated like things you'd scrape off your shoe and you had a mix that was destructive-wise, like staring into the headlights of a freight train that was 20 feet away. I had a friend who had *just* acquired her MSCS and wanted to try Web Services. She offered to do it on her own time, using her own resources, and was told NO. Not "make sure you maintain focus on your current projects" but NO.
Time passed, and I had three brushes with death (your title is Healthy Software Developer). I'm not being melodramatic, but when your doctor comes in and says, "If you waited another week to come in, you'd be dead", it realigns your priorities. A lot.
Sorry for the brain dump, but your title "Healthy Software Developer" and description of politics on projects triggered a lot of memories. I'd be interested in your opinion of this little Luftstalag. BTW, I'm retired now and it may have saved my life.
Wow! Thanks for sharing your struggles.
I feel your story echoes the presupposition of this channel - that how people treat each other has a bigger impact on our sustainable success in this industry than just technical competence.
An environment of learning is still so counter to the culture of far too many companies. We owe it to the health of ourselves, our families, and our community to take relationships and how we pursue career advancement more seriously!!
I’m glad to hear you’re recovering and made it through.
>> I'm retired now and it may have saved my life
I didn't _retire_ from IT, I just heaved it overboard for reasons you've already stated. That decision probably saved my life as well!
@@HealthyDev What you say about how people treat each other is so spot on, and it saddens me that it's probably one of the most major things in Agile that gets overlooked - everyone takes away all the burndown charts and new titles, but misses the "people over process" element.
I’m actually dealing with this right now. My team is super small - one webdev one designer and me to manage and assist where needed. We’re almost a billion dollar company and they’ve assigned my team the task of building a multi-million dollar application. Cool!
Only problem is that it needs to be built on top of a severely outdated codebase, support multiple business units and be up and running in 4 months. When I say old codebase, think 1999.
4 months later, it’s up and running - mostly functional but very buggy with lots of improvements remaining.
From the beginning of the project I expressed the incredible challenges and detailed my concerns and asked for additional resources. They listened but no help was provided so we got to work and i continued to keep all the key stakeholders up to date on issues and status. No one should have been surprised.
I just had a meeting with them yesterday where they voiced their disappointment and wanted to know why it’s not perfect and how I can make sure this doesn’t happen again. They actually think the problem was because my 3 person team wasn’t running an agile workflow.
It’s the first time in my life I was at a loss for words.
I’m really sorry to hear this. One of the things that can help, if you’re not doing this already, is to have a status report you circulate every week with issues and their status as a color. Show red (still a problem) next to anything that’s a risk you’ve communicated.
When things go south, you can politely but firmly remind them that you’ve been raising this issue for X weeks and management failed to take action on it.
This has worked well for me on consulting engagements. You can even print out every status report and pass out the stack to each attendee of the meeting for extra impact. Some people need to see physical assets to avoid passing the buck.
And I’m just one person, but in my experience ignored requests for help doom more efforts than following agile practices ever will!
YMMV
Software development revolves around providing services for your clients (internal to the business or exsternal it's the same). If your "clients" are deaf to your requests and warnings you should do as I learned to do after 5 years of crap eating...record any meeting with the stakeholders, be sure to state in advance what are the challenges and what would be required to meet the project's goal. When things go wrong and you got blamed use any relevant recorded clips to "rub the shit on the face" of anybody that is really responsible for the problem. Usually even the more psyco manager cannot deny the crap that came out directly from their mouth. I adopted a range of passive-aggressive strategies too, like changing my email signature to include this quote:"If you came to me with a problem for witch I provided a solution but you did not listened or cared enough then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM". Having this little reminder in every email I send helped a lot.
>> they voiced their disappointment and wanted to know why it’s not perfect and how I can make sure this doesn’t happen again
My response would've been, "I cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!"
I use very negative language around expectations in order to "pre disappoint" stakeholders. E.g. "We are going to fail. By ranking the backlog we can ensure that when we fail, we fail at the less important things."
Sounds like most of my IT career. At the risk of sounding arrogant, the business people asking or demanding don't know what they are talking about. They know in their mind what they want and that's it. I have found that no matter what you tell them, they want what they want and tune out when you give them any reason their idea won't work at all or work well. I have become a master of knitting old, crumby, dissimilar , third party POS systems together to provide users what they want. I have found that many times after a roll out their displeasure at something is a function of their inability to adequately tell the business analyst what they REALLY want. When this happens you simply have to fix or redesign your solution. Only the most simple of projects normally come off without a hitch.
Welcome to the world of the full stack developer.
Oh and you can (and should) keep good documentation of the project, but I will warn you that when something goes wrong and those above you throw you under the bus, that documentation counts for shit. In the end you still have to satisfy the customer no matter if you are right or wrong.
Sounds like every company I've ever worked for.
so turue...
Agile especially scrum allows people with no clue being promoted to managerial and decision making roles. Eventually they ignore technical people . At the end team might deliver the project but with much higher cost, so much flaws and a burnt out dev team. There is no other industry that let people with not enough experience become a leader.
"There is no other industry that let people with not enough experience become a leader" Oh my sweet summer child.
On the contrary, I've worked a number of fields and it's the same everywhere. Those good at politics will usually win over those that are competent, often because the latter functions according to ethics that made them competent in the first place. The former have no such scruples.
THAT !
non technical people really love scrum
Precisely. This is the worst consequence of methodologies like scrum and agile. These are socialist techniques, which always tend to match everyone, regardless of the consequences. That's why people are seeing IT projects being ruined in every corner of the world and they don't understand why. But much worse than all this, is to see that these methodologies have become the foundation of new religions with thousands of fanatics who defend such techniques completely ignoring who is opposed.
Hey man, watched the whole thing. There is nothing about scrum at all... it's more the typical company problems. Looks like this would have happened with any development process
I think it's more about scrum done wrong, ie user stories with no acceptance criteria/definition of done
A "non-profit" with the latest tools and desks in a lavish office building. Par for the course.
It's all business expense, man. Just because it's non-profit doesn't mean the people don't want to get rich.
scrum is a special kind of hell, it always turns into the blame, or the crying game... the circular firing squad.
It's not scrum, agile, pmp or any other framework that produces the firing squad. It's the culture and the levels of respect, diligence, forbearance, honor, transparency and accountability that make the difference. If your scrum master is a good culture hacker and strong enough to shield the team then iterations and retrospectives can be a force for good.
@@winterca The most important thing to read and understand is the Agile Manifesto and its principles - agilemanifesto.org/ . Everything else follows from there, but do that, watch this channel and along with by some of the people who wrote it (e.g. Martin Fowler), and you'll understand the essence of what it is and why people use Scrum, Kanban, User Stories, and all this other stuff.
@@stevecarter8810 Agile is not a framework. It's a methodology under which there are several frameworks, such as scrum. Since when is pmp a framework? That's just a certification.
4:50 Yeah, failing to define "done" is not ever the programmers' fault. That is 100% on the project manager, who decided they wanted to "do scrum" and then failed to do any of the project management that Scrum requires.
Individual developers don't get paid to stick their necks out on process issues. Project managers do.
Aside: Non-profit organizations don't have shareholders, but that doesn't mean they have to be broke or struggling. There are some very well funded NPOs out there.
The lack of communication in this story is ironic, seeing as how communication is one of the main points of agile frameworks.
Sly observation! 👍
Just starting out in the field. You give the most straightforward and honest advice. Thank you very much man.
I'm amazed at how constantly Scrum people fail to take responsibility. Is always someone else's fault, no matter what, they are pristine and impolute. Is someone else that failed because not smart enough for Scrum
Actually had a former manager explain how he attended a conference where they gave a top 10 list of fallacies / misconceptions about SCRUM. Of course, one of the items on that list which he had to bring up was how it was a misconception that SCRUM burned out software developers. LOL Let's see ... the lingo itself ... "Sprint" implies that you are going to go as fast as you can go. And, you are going to submit to sprints delivering working functionality into the production system at the end of each ... ad infinitum ...
Pretty sure that I watched Carl Lewis take long rests between sprints at the 1984 Olympics. ROTFL
Not only is the term sprint like this, but the idea of a "product backlog" was way more radical and offensive to me. Because the idea is that the project should be done on day 0 and every second you take to do the work is one second behind schedule. You can work as hard as you can, you are always behind schedule. When i heard this in college, i told the professor this was morally abject and clearly counterproductive. But we are a couple years on now so apparently he didnt pass along the memo. Too bad.
Let's just say that I never have these issues. I've seen people get into trouble with agile, but it's mostly their own lack of understanding of office politics that get them there.
This is very, very familiar to me. I work at large firm in a devops team. The team consists of several junior developers, two lead developers, one of who'm also is the scrum master and a product owner who is supposed to be the communication portal to the client but who also tries to push more and more work on people, making false promises to the client and if we happen to succeed on completing them, he takes the credit. If we fail, we get the blame.
He is always trying to get a promotion, actively challenging the manager about it. When the manager denied giving him one, he got the manager fired trough plain lying and faking evidence.
Next to that the two lead developers can't get along with another. They are always down playing the work of one another. They are both trying to gain the overhand on one another. Claiming each others successes and trying to blame each other for mistakes. Lately both of them are even claiming the successes of the junior developers as their own or blaming their failures on the junior developers. Very toxic work environment.
The company chief got involved and they are lying even to him. Right now the whole team is being looked at. The lead developers can afford this publicity, but the junior developers cant. But the lead developers dont care one inch about this. All they are care is their own wins.
Thanks for sharing this. I try to help people by telling them the hardest part of software development is working with other people, but it’s easier to believe some missing silver bullet framework or agile practice is the solution. As your story clearly articulates - it’s more complicated than that! 👍
Ask for the hatchet man and be up front with him. Large firms have people for this kind of problem. Those people will know whats up if you level with them.
"Done" is such a strong word. I would often quote this as a developer. :-)
I never claim anything is done. It's either in a state of "it works as intended", or "ready for inspection"
The lack of a concept of 'done' in software is a serious problem. There has to be a concept of done otherwise it can never be released.
@@brianlaudrupchannel That's just false.
"done" doesn't mean "ready for release", it means "there's absolutely no room for improvement". Something doesn't have to be "done" to be released, it just needs to be "good enough".
@@tissuepaper9962 then your good enough is done for version 1
@@brianlaudrupchannel that's not "done". If you just released version 1 and then never touched the product ever again, nobody would be using it after a year.
Very interesting and well told story. I work in a different field and have been through kinda hell myself, so it’s nice to hear other’s stories. It reflects how your personal hell is actually a universal corporate crap anywhere. It helps to cope.
Yes and it's root cause: capitalism.
It amazes me how so many software projects these days just have to use scrum and agile development. I've worked on a number of projects where agile development is great and works well but I've worked on a lot of projects where it really needs to be a traditional waterfall process because the requirements have to be spelled out in a tight budget has to be adhered to and they latch on to agile development and the cost overruns are horrendous. I wish there was a better understanding out there, at least one that's commonplace among developers and those that manage them, about when to use what kind of software development lifecycle.
Sadly it seems similar to the education systems where the newest theories are adopted and the old ones get thrown under the bus without realizing that there is no magic solution that works with everyone.
I really enjoyed this and I think it is really generous of you to share your experiences. Really helpful to try to get an idea what it is like being a software developer in the real world.
Thanks for watching! Glad you got something from it. 👍
As a PM, I've never clicked on a link so fast. Also, you're absolutely correct about PM's, generally speaking. All PM's want to come in and "shake up the process", particularly when nobody asked for it, it won't help the company, and it isn't remotely needed.
This is true not just for software but anything in business. When a project is failing, management often has to look for scapegoats, since that's better (for them) than taking the blame themselves.
Thanks for sharing, great point. Unfortunately by doing this they demotivate people from doing anything even mildly risky. Which as I’m guessing you know is needed to pull off a project!
It is actually better for them and the company to examine their own roles critically. Its just ego. There is no excuse. Dont compromise. They dont compromise with you. And you are giving away ground for free here. Speech shapes opinions.
6:22 lol Jamie don't you know that making it appear as if you're busy at all times so it seems you care is the most important fundamental of agile?
🤣
Oof. That one hit me straight in the face. 2realirl4meirl
Thanks for this video. I no longer regret not working in I.T.
Sad though, people spend the best years of their lives in the classroom and go way in debt for hopes of a rewarding life ; Only to find out they have returned to kindergarten with a S* load of debt.
You dont even need a college degree to make money in IT, im living proof. If i could change anything, i would drop out sooner.
That sounds like madness! I'm drawing some parallels between your example and the company I work for. silly infighting and king of the hill games. My current technique is to recognize when you might be a sucked in one of those and avoid it if at all possible, but if not just learning how to control your reactions so you can do what you are paid for and succeed.
Very entertaining. I have worked with both development teams and hardware engineering teams. So, I am not a software development heavyweight. But, my comment is: project management using scrum/ agile is ineffective. In hardware engineering (installing big automated systems etc.), the teams used more conventional project management (non-scrum/ agile) techniques and these processes were much more effective.
I am new to your channel and am sold!!!!! I subscribed, your stories and moral of the stories at the end is a HIT!!!
The power plays and politics are such an important part of the workplace and unfortunately, developers are not necessarily well-equipped to deal with this. This is a great story, thanks for sharing.
Happy to. I agree, that’s why I do this - even if it is a little cringe ;)
I think when a scrum project starts, it is good to have a document stating what the roles are, what the responsibilities are for each role, and the name of the person in each role. That way the project has a better chance to start out clearly and new people joining at least know who the other people are. When so many companies and individuals like to modify Scrum, I would do this. Other-wise anyone can change the rules mid-way, and it can get chaotic.
Also, just because scrum has smaller sprints than waterfall, it doesn't mean that specs can be ambiguous. Make sure incoming work is well defined with wireframe images/URLs/highlights, whatever is needed to make sure the work can be done in one pass. In my experience, the vaguer the user story is coming in, the more varied the opinions of what it should have been at the end (and rework). Vagueness doesn't work well unless you have an especially trusting and respectful group that can make adjustments on the fly without blame.
Agree completely. You might relate to another video that gets into your insights on problems with vague scope, "Can User Stories Make Software Projects Late?": czcams.com/video/NavlPobhj7A/video.html
@@HealthyDev That is a good video where you talk about vague user stories.
@@kensearle4892 thanks Ken, glad it was helpful. 👍
Scrum and Agile require a huge amount of discipline and commitment from the team to make it a success. If you don't it will fall apart extremely fast.
Years ago I had a similar IT project with a Texas private, not for profit. A year after I left all hell broke loose, it was so bad it made headlines in the newspaper for a number of months. I was so, so glad to be at a safe distance when that went down.
NGOs/NPOs are a great way to evade taxes and also to cover money laundering. That's probably one of the reasons this organization have the culture you described. If someone goes off the script, some unwanted things can be seen and the company that pays the organization bills can have serious problems.
"NGOs/NPOs are a great way to evade taxes" Go on...
@@genericdeveloper3966 I know some cases in my country, like the 41(!) NGOs investigated for being involved in crimes (including money laundry) in Amazonas in 2017. I guess there's a documentary on netflix about money laundering that shows some cases involving NGOs too.
This is probably absolutely the closest to reality.
That's crazy. That's why I prefer project management documents that are explicit in expectations, parameters, limitations and deliverables. Also, add the fact that all relevant shareholders have to sign off on it before proceeding with the project.
I really appreciate your videos about your past experiences. I'm starting a SW from scratch; I'm an "evening developer" since I was a kid and a full time enterpreneur for 15 years. I need to know what will likely be to manage real SW dev project and to make my employes proud to work with me. Only direct experience unfortunately will give the answer I'm looking for, but thanks. Everytime I learn something new from you.
subscribed.
Read the agile manifesto and live by it:
agilemanifesto.org/
If you actually apply what it says developers will love you.
Same thing happened to me.
lol.
*my other comment said the same thing but in that case I should have said "I let that happen to me"...been in software for 5 years "rolled off" and out of a company twice for having good intentions but not being assertive enough to push back or not communicating when I need help.
Huge ego blow to be let go, start to think I'm not good enough, picked the wrong career.
Glad to know Im not alone... getting back on the horse and sending my resume out now as my savings is gone.
Glad to find your channel.
Uses to live in Elgin btw. Out of college moved there but now in Ann Arbor Michigan. Awesome MTB trails here tho... I hear spider mtn is fun near you sry mixed topics:)
Cheers man thanks again
Nice, my Dad went to college in Ann Arbor. I have fond memories of going there as a kid. He’s since passed on but I always hold a special place for it in my heart. It’s been over 20 years though, so I imagine it’s completely different now.
Please make more videos with your professional experiences in the industry and takeaways. I’m experiencing the same thing you went through in a different project and it’s been rough.
If I were a donor to that company, I would find another one to donate to once I found out they were spending money on lavish office accommodations. It would be interesting to know the percentage of donations that actually get used for their philanthropic projects.
I really enjoy these stories - but I have to admit, they’re a bit stressful and I’d be afraid to be put in a situation like that. It would make me very angry to have lies told to my boss about me. I’m glad your company knows you well and didn’t automatically believe the client.
NO ACs, NO Dev work. THE END! Plus you should have accompanying wireframes/interactive demo. Last, ALWAYS get 'approval' from stakeholders and dev team. No dev work should be done before these happens. To ensure you don't have people saying later something was never agreed on, have the review meeting done in Zoom (webex, etc.,) and RECORD the meeting. Even if you're in a room, have Zoom going at the same time while you present. Last, ALWAYS get an email approval from all the stakeholders. 20+ years in product development and this helps tremendously!
Zoom is spyware. There are plenty of open source tools such as jitsi you can use. Giving your work to half the governments on the planet for free doesnt help you or the company.
Unfortunately contrary to most comments here, the real take in my opinion, is that the "definition of done" even if done right here wouldn't help the outcome would be the same.
The PM threw you under the bus, dude. He needed a fall guy for why the project was failing.
Exactly
Very interesting perspective that a process itself can be the underlying problem when it appears to be people
Yeah it happens more often than I thought it would!
My thoughts exactly. Changing the process wouldn't have prevented what happened.
The process is always the problem per definition because people have been a constant for around the past hundred thousand years with no major genetic changes.
Wow!!! Sounds like poor implementation of Scrum framework, and team and organization not understanding the framework, and not taking every opportunity to inspect and adapt during daily stand ups and sprint reviews and retrospectives as the team developed software. Where was the Scrum Master? The Scrum Master should have been coaching the team. Project Manager shouldn't have been part of the team. It isn't a role of Scrum. And to top it off there was a big, no huge disconnect with the team and the stakeholders. A cluster all around.
There's plenty of bad scrum implemented out there. Also, not every scrum rule makes sense in every organization. I learned that the hard way when trying to implement scrum at a startup. Some things we implemented and were great. Other things that were "by the book" just failed to be embraced and caused issues.
We ended up changing the framework to our needs and that has worked best.
Sounds like every company I've worked at.
A lot of companies don't understand how to create a software product. Hell even a lot of senior developers don't either.
Never blame a process. The process is not an authority. That's a cop out for someone who spends people for their purpose while taking credit for their efforts and blaming them for their own dirt and faults. The only time someone else has merit to blame "the process" is if it's ruled over by someone higher up and their livelihood is threatened if they don't go along with it rather than having who's in charge of the process fix it.
One nail you hit right on the head is that too often the product's deliverables are improperly or inadequately defined; sometimes by little more than hand waving gestures. The amount of work it takes to properly describe the desired end result in sufficient detail and/or define relevant (as opposed to irrelevant) functionality-based project milestones is something most people/clients simply do not want to do for lack of appetite. Right out of the gate, then, the project is at high risk of missing the mark or, worse, doomed to failure. I believe that mentality is one facet of the lack of appreciation and respect for what developers do, and of the effort required to go about doing it, which seems all-too-prevalent in, and to the detriment of, the world of business.
Agile is just for business people who know nothing about software development. You waste so much time in the long run because there is no vision to what the product should be.
IT is nothing like it used to be. It is now mostly terrible across the board at many companies. Back stabbing, people lobbing grenades to create problems.
I have been in IT for 42 years. It used to be an absolutely enjoyable field to be in.
8:35 MISTAKE - contradicting a person of influence publicly in front of others. Either make your point very gently, or catch the person one-on-one. My God I've seen this mistake so many times and have made it myself.
Management just needs to get thicker skin. If your consultant isn't allowed to contradict you, what's the point of hiring them?
PM not showing up to project meetings is a big fat red flag. I'm surprised the director didn't pick up on that and fire the PM, but it sounds like the politics there was ridiculous.
Two thoughts, 1- Read the Peter Principle. 2- Austin is not political unless you disagree with left leaning views.
wow Quite a story, thanks. That's why it's important for companies to hire people .intelligently..
it's not just in software industry. This game of thrones has existed in all professions.
Non-profit doesn't mean humble offices. To be called non-profit they just need to use any money earned on the company ("expenses"), so that is why a non-profit easily can have lavish offices.
I have personally seen situations where the people who get fired first are the ones they actually should have kept. It sounds to me like the first two firings were reasonable, but not the real big problem, which sounds like an incompetent product manager and director. If the product manager can't create a product definition, and if the director can't set a culture and a process up, you are screwed. Sadly it's the bad, or even, well intentioned but mediocre leaders that should get fired first, but they often are the last to go.
This is the kind of stuff that makes for a TOXIC environment. Fortunately, I work in an environment that's skilled with Agile and we do a pretty good job at it. We have a good ScrumMaster as well. It's too bad that there isn't a lot you can do about this if you're a consultant. You can't just recuse yourself. I hope you've had better experiences.
I have, thanks Mike. Glad to hear you’re on a healthy team!! 👍
Oh man, Tacodeli are the best, I worked in Austin for 4 months back in 2017, right next to the Barton Creek's one
The place I worked for when I first moved down here took me to the one off Spyglass rd on the first day there. Our office was within walking distance. One of my favorite spots in town for lunch or breakfast!
Honestly, non-profits can (and tend) to be worse the higher up the chain you go.
The manager you described reminds me of a friend who would never acknowledge his faults, limitations or ignorance and instead would always defer the authority to someone else supposedly better than you. Every time I said something that made him look inferior to me in any way he would point out that he knows someone that knows better than me. I think this a pathological need to be right and better than everybody else. And it was never the case I was showing off or anything. Say I'm an IT professional and he's not. Then I make a comment about something IT related, then he would go "oh but I know person X that knows everything about that". It was so frustrating that overtime I *fired* him as a friend.
Yeah that sounds like they’re struggling with insecurity or perhaps narcissism. I did a video on that if you haven’t seen it already: czcams.com/video/6rjdBKuz9_I/video.html
Isn't that what agile software development is all about. Nobody has to define anything up front, and they can change the requirements as they go. If it doesn't get finished on time, or doesn't work right, you just blame the developers....
There's a good quote I heard once. Can't remember the source. "If Agile is working, you're doing it wrong"
I'm not even a developer and I still find these stories super interesting. 👏
I don't know that I would blame Scrum so much as I would blame poor communication. No system can work when there is bad communication. Waterfall or any other "process" wouldn't have saved this project.
Yep relying on vague user stories was the process aspect that seemed to be the surface culprit. I talked about this more in another video, “Can User Stories Make Software Projects Late?”: czcams.com/video/NavlPobhj7A/video.html but the relational friction and politics between people were definitely the eventual downfall...
I'm a cost estimator for the government, and one if the big issues we have is that people tend to remember the first number they hear, even if it's not from an official source or is preliminary. I've worked projects where PMs did back of the envelope estimates that would get cited as "the cost" over my estimate which had been informed by the schedule and adjusted for risk and inflation.
Yup! When I joined the consulting agency I worked for they had a decent onboarding process where they taught us some basic consulting concepts. One was “the first number is the one they’ll judge you on” meaning even if you’re able to reset expectations, people are often still disappointed. I try to defer commitments to only when they’re absolutely necessary and I have the highest confidence possible. I talked about this in another video, “How Agile Teams Grow Toxic! Ep. 4 Commitments”: czcams.com/video/p6VUHGe1HuU/video.html maybe there’s something in there you can relate to or benefit from.
Quote from Napoleon Hill's _Think and Grow Rich:_
“If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong-yes, even that you know is wrong-isn’t it better to begin by saying: “Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: “I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.”
This was from Dale Carnegie's _How to Win Friends and Influence People._ I did it to make you go "Hey, you're WRONG!" ;) Except there's never really a great idea to put someone else on the spot, unless there's really good reason to. And then it's better to let the other party _discover_ how he's wrong. But never say it to his or hers face. You'll get fired.
Could you put this feedback in the context of the story? I’m familiar with Dale’s book but I’m not sure what aspect you’re relating it to.
@@HealthyDev Seems the story tells of people who got fired because it put the boss on the spot. I theorise that glossing over it, or not getting the boss or leader into those positions in the first place, could save someone their job. Of course, if it makes the project fall apart, then I guess you'd lose your job anyway......... So I'm not saying that this is the _best_ solution. xD
Hrmm okay. It seemed like people got fired because there were problems but people were inexperienced with scrum so they went looking for someone to blame. But there are a lot of relational dynamics going on. I was just trying to figure out which aspect it was applicable to.
Well, this is really true. People just don't like to be on the spotlight about being wrong, and if they're your boss, they're going to look up to shift the blame. It is basically inevitable.
@@PieroUlloa Hehe, I argued with another teacher online. Didn't know she was some department boss up north. I made her so angry, she told me she'd recommend my boss to fire me. I told her good luck. (She's a leftie. My boss is a right winger. Party card is strong in Norway, sadly.)
Perfect way of identifying the process vs the people!
There hasn't been a new video since late July, I hope you are doing well!
Thanks I got sidetracked with a pretty hairy consulting gig. Hope to start back up soon.
@@HealthyDev glad to know you are okay. Great content BTW
I always tell people who don't know anything about software development that being a software developer is like being in an Italian-American mafia. And Jayme tells these stories exactly like an ex-mafia.
Working is a political environment is defined basically as rules existing, some are enforced for some people and not others.
Very early in this videoI picked up you have a bad PM - Usually devs and especially PM's can talk for hours about their previous job but have no insights into the current project I get worried. Also team cohesion is very important on big projects, you always get that one PM that wants to burn everyone. I once drove with a PM and 3 other devs from a demo with the client and this particular PM tried very hard to bait me into talking bad about another senior dev I worked with on other project , but to my knowledge his work was solid and on time. Turns out he promised a crazy deadline to a client before talking to this dev ,tried to get everyone's opinion about this dev for ammunition so he can throw him under the bus because he had no proof he discussed the timelines with the dev.
Interesting story, but I'm not sure what scrum has to do with any of it.
1. You're billing a client out of an estimate wrote early on. That's not an Agile or scrum practice, i.e. that's fault of your consulting firm's business model and the client's lack of understand of what building complex software entails
2. DoD. This is responsibility of the dev team too. And the experienced contractors you guys were you could have also raised the lack of a DoD early on.
3. Unclear or too much high level user stories. That's a perfect item to bring up at planning meetings.
4. Blaming game. Well, if you run an org on the promise of doing Agile but while having deadlines you know that this will fail and someone will work hard to protect its seat
5. Project manager. There's no project manager in scrum. Now, if you work in sprints why would you expect a project manager to be on the daily scrum after sprint is committed?
I could go on forever about how this isn't a 'scrum problem'.
Thanks for your feedback. We did all we could to educate the client about definition of done and the issues with their requirements. They weren’t receptive to improvements to their process so we had to do the best we could and watch things unfold, adapting within the compromises of the situation. As I’m sure you can understand, I didn’t include every detail of the project in the video. I was focusing on teaching one aspect of misapplication of scrum and how it unfolded that might help someone.
@@HealthyDev thanks for the comment. I can understand some of your firms' practical limitations since I work for a consulting company myself, I think one thing the video could do better is point out that this is indeed an issue of poor application of scrum.
While you clarified that on your comment, the rest of your content made no mention that this was a very poor application of scrum, thus my reaction.
I don't know much about your audience, but lots of developers are taught wrong scrum and many of them go online looking for anecdotal evidence of its failures to prove the framework wrong and deflect responsibility.
@@vai5959 thanks for the follow up. Great to hear you feel the same way (scrum isn't the problem, it's misapplication). I talk about this in many of the videos in my scrum playlist on the channel. This one is just a story and you're right the title isn't the best - I had to try to fit it into CZcams's limitations and didn't do the best job.
Politics, politics, politics... almost always first.... then productivity and skills( which typically never gets you promoted, unless they are upgrading you from a shovel to a bigger shovel because you handle it so well) I’ve worked for some companies that were real drama festoons. Charities... problem the worst of the pack. Everyone is sticking it to each other to climb to the top of the heap!!!!!
Drama festoons - nice I learned a new phrase today ;)
I feel like everything you said, and made total sense, was very insightful.
Thank you 👍
I have been involved in projects where there was too many political backstabbings happened. Thankfully I was in the position to pull myself and my team from the project. 6 months later, the project was defunded and considered a failure.
Damn, Im starting to think that any type of worker needs to get a personal dash cam like cops have and record every interaction so they can proof that things happened as they did, and not as someone else is saying they did....
Riveting story. Toxic! I knew a territorial newbie scrum master who didn't often know what she was talking about just bandied about buzzwords and was generally deadweight on the team. Left the company and went on to be an Agile Coach/Leadership coach for another gullible company. I'm always amazed at how these people have the chutzpah to try to sell themselves as more than what they are capable of
For real. Good agile coaches can do amazing things to turn around the health of a company - but there are a lot of charlatans out there (as I’m sure you know!). I talk about “fake agile” a lot on the channel. It almost seems to be the de facto “agile” process these days.
You can only hope that they learned what didn't work and tried something different.
Man, I do the opposite. I try to undersell myself so people don't get the wrong impression and think I am more capable than I really am. I couldn't imagine the stress of people expecting more from you than you can offer. Who would sign up for something like that is beyond me.
@@seesharper8913 That's a tough balance. Putting more out there than you can handle, definitely not a good idea. But underselling, also has it's sticky points. Sure it might make sense from a self-protection standpoint, but what are you missing out on as far as possible rewards? A question only you can answer, but yes I've been in the position where I chose to undersell too (with various results).
What I can take away from this case is the big client has a PM that lacks product knowledge, and other contextual things.
This is what I fear, we got a big client coming in. Wants Agile, work with their devs and delivers product specs. If their PM starts to add user stories mid project without justification (meaning of "done", ) I better make sure the contract has those clauses from the start.
Another thing, since remote is our only choice, I got myself a webcam and try to fix my bed in the background. So this way we still foster trust, and work as diligent as possible.
You explain so thoroughly - you must be a software developer and maybe even work with customers a lot ;)
Ah, the fall contractors.
Always get it in writing. Otherwise it's just your word against theirs.
Having worked for a non profit coincidentally based in austin, i can say politics is EVERYTHING.
Dude, its gotten bad in corp America....your story is relatable.
Non-profits are a racket.
What?! A PM that doesn't know what he is talking about! Unthinkable = )) Okay, this video was flipped my way, and at 'first pass' my first question is "where is your Scrum Master?". A SM will be the wave breaker to all the politics you are talking about. Developers develop. SMs serve and protect. I also didn't hear anything mentioned regarding 'a plan'. To develop strictly from user stories is aimless work. Last bit of advice, make sure to wire framing with your architects. I hope this helps.
The client had the scrum master, and it was there first scrum project...
Just what I needed.
If NASA used scrum, they would never put a rocket in space.
But SpaceX: *_"SpaceX for nearly a decade has used “agile scrum” - a framework for managing software development - for enterprise resource planning, space operations, finance and human resources. There is a “continuous deployment pipeline for updating critical internal information multiple times per day,” the report said. Automated testing is used across the entire infrastructure."_* spacenews.com/pentagon-advisory-panel-dod-could-take-a-page-from-spacex-on-software-development/
@@m.x. Thats interesting. But again its not pure Scrum its not used as a straight jacket, big-brother control mechanism but a tool to monitor progress, quickly identifying potential problems and finding solutions for them.
@@m.x. they may not have non technical scrum masters
Interesting story, but the key thing that puzzles me is, how much work can be required for software that helps people get grants? Seems to me like there's only so much computers can help with that, a couple of application forms, little search functions. How come they had an entire team of people work for what looks like several months?
And FWIW - I am software developer myself.
Things are not as simple as they seem, at least that’s been my experience from having the good (and difficult) fortune to work with teams in so many industries. I have to be careful not to go into too many details because I am legally bound to protect the identity of the company (as all consultants are unless they contractually agree on endorsement).
Stories like this, which are not unusual, make me very hesitant to recommend a career as a software developer if someone should ask.
Still a better career than 99% of the other professions you can get into without a small loan of a million dollars.
If politics is "when people tell each other what they want to hear instead of the truth", what is the opposite of politics, when people keep silent instead of telling the truth (or engaging in politics)?
Staying silent is not telling the truth if you have an objection, no. Patrick Lencioni’s book “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” is where I take this definition from and if you haven’t read it yet I highly recommend it. Fantastic insights and an easy read.
Wow, it felt like I was watching a movie... Thanks for sharing! So, the big 4 product manager didn't get fired?? Because that would've been the ending everyone wanted..
Good question! I'm not really sure what happened to him.
@@HealthyDev Damn... LOL!
Subscribed! :D Junior software developer here :)
Welcome to the channel! 👍
@@HealthyDev Thank you! :) Extremely good and informative content you have!
“I had always heard non-profits can have this altruistic purpose their company so I was really surprised to find that this company was one of the most political companies I had ever worked for.”
This really shouldn’t surprise you, activists are the most political (and often useless) people on the face of the earth.
Ha, yeah I guess we all learn at different times ;). I was 34 when I actually experienced it firsthand. With that said I’m careful not to generalize all non-profits this way. But at least it gives me some things to look out for.
The Product Manager wasn’t getting alignment with strategy & stakeholders
-software development for a non profit
-non profit pressure on results and budget but spends most of the capital on retreats
Lol on the user stories. Ya, always get stakeholder feedback. Otherwise, you get rice instead of khuskhus. And OMG NP are sesspools of politics, wait till you sit on the board of one.
Wow just read some of the comments here. Im a Scrum master and Section manager I belive 100 % in the servant leader role. Scrum works well for us but only if you have trust between the members in the team.
But here are some of the things i see. Indien culture is base on old values like boss is always rigth and you can never say no. This is really a big problem in a scrum setup.