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New It's what they call agile development.
It's basically micromanagement carried to an extreme. Lots of short meetings about what you did yesterday, what you plan to do today, and what you expect to do tomorrow. It's sort of like having cubicle meetings in a tight development group, but with management kibitzing. I understand that it's the coming thing. From what I've seen, it's a significant rectal discomfort.
New I would be at the beck and call of several of those beasts
as a sysadmin, maybe that was why the guy asked me if I have ever felt stomped upon and whether I could hold my own. hmmm things to think about
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Now. Gimme those perms now!
I mean it. I'm trying to code here, I got a junior next to me who is supposed to be giving me help yet he's only distracting me. Those bastards said pair programming would be better. Fuckers.
New Pair programming is fickle.
You need both programmers at a similar level of experience and ability, just with a somewhat different skillset. That's when it works the best and works amazingly well. It is when there is a noticeable difference in ability level that it doesn't work. (Been in both situations.)

Wade.
Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
New Never had that dynamic
Time spent with equal or better coders was usually during the design / split out work phase, and then an occasional "Hey, you: I need another set of eyes".

Then project consolidation / hand off to the next guy as I went to the next project.

Other than that, I usually had a well chosen junior who tagged along with everything I did, and supported my systems, but he knew to stay quiet when sitting near me while coding.
New What I figured a good dev can do.
And that is ask questions. And a good senior dev knows how to ask the right question when he has to try a thorny problem in someone else's head. :-) (Which is the "I need a second set of eyes" scenario.)

Good pair programming simply makes this happen a thousand times quicker.

Wade.
Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
New There's a bit more to it than that...
Short iterations so there's always something completed, highly integrated testing methodology, standardized backlog management.

It's significantly better than waterfall (for many but not all things) or the ever-popular "no process necessary".
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Re: There's a bit more to it than that...
It's all kinds of crap for maintenance work.

Also, the vocabulary is just ridiculous.
New Granted.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New I like scrum for development
but I think it's lousy for project management (or selling to a customer).

I do find that it requires a significant investment of the customer's time and experienced developers.

If your developers are arguing that unit testing is worthless because it tells you only what you already know (and yes I've had that conversation, twitch). Or if your developers admit that they're not going to put this one-off project into SVN (or any other software control system)...because the files are the on server, so nothing can happen to them (another fine conversation, twitch). In those cases, I'd worry about other things than Scrum first.

Those stand-up meetings can be very useful though -- daily telling your manager your blocked because he can't get off his tail to make a phone call...

Besides, as a Sys-Admin...you'd be a chicken...not a pig. :-)
New That's a good point.
You *don't* want the daily stand-up meeting to be run by the Project Manager. That's the Team Leader's job. If the PM is trying to run it, then there's a development manager who isn't doing their job.

Wade.
Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
New Well Scrum was SUPPOSED
to be self-organized teams. The scrum leader should be a pig, not a chicken.

That said, PMP started realizing that Scrum could put them out of a job. So Scrum certification has been going on crazy and a lot of companies have PMP trying to backfit waterfall into Scrum. (Which is why I said it was poor for project management and selling to a customer. :-) )

New Quite.
But Project Management can happen quite successfully without roping in all the developers. One of their more useful skills is liasing between two development managers.

We also found a way to "de-Waterfall" a Product Manager: it is basically stealing incomplete designs for the developers to play with :-) though this works better if he can be convinced to hand them over voluntarily. But the Project Manager has to be able to sooth ruffled feathers when the Product Manager keeps getting given suggestions to improve the design before he's "ready to release it".

Wade.
Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
New Product Managers
... shouldn't be doing designs. They should be preparing business requirements.

UI designers and IAs should be doing designs.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Imprecise definition.
By 'design' I meant Product Design, which means marshalling business rules into UX. And they have to approve the layout anyway.

Wade.
Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
     had an interesting conversation today about SCRUM - (boxley) - (17)
         It's what they call agile development. - (hnick) - (14)
             I would be at the beck and call of several of those beasts - (boxley) - (4)
                 Now. Gimme those perms now! - (crazy) - (3)
                     Pair programming is fickle. - (static) - (2)
                         Never had that dynamic - (crazy) - (1)
                             What I figured a good dev can do. - (static)
             There's a bit more to it than that... - (malraux) - (2)
                 Re: There's a bit more to it than that... - (pwhysall) - (1)
                     Granted. -NT - (malraux)
             I like scrum for development - (S1mon_Jester) - (5)
                 That's a good point. - (static) - (4)
                     Well Scrum was SUPPOSED - (S1mon_Jester) - (3)
                         Quite. - (static) - (2)
                             Product Managers - (malraux) - (1)
                                 Imprecise definition. - (static)
         I'm an advocate. - (mvitale)
         We do that all the time. - (static)

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