Bingo of Awful IT Processes
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
The point is that if story points=hours, you should just fucking use hours from the beginning.
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The point is that if story points=hours, you should just fucking use hours from the beginning.
Yes, that's what I meant as well
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In the "right" use case, story points should just represent relative effort.
The hours dont matter, its more about ranking how challenging a task is, in order to help the manager rank the priority of tasks.
You should have typically 2~3 metrics:
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Points, which represent relative effort of the task to the other tasks you are also ranking.
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Value, how much value does doing this task provide, how important is it
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Risk, how risky is it that this might break shit though if you make these changes (IE new features typically are low risk since they just add stuff, but if you have to modify old stuff now your risk goes up)
If you have a good integration testing system automated, Risk can be mostly removed since you can just rely on your testing framework to catch if something is gonna explode.
Then your manager can use a formula with these values to basically rank a priority order for every ticket you now scored, in order to assess what the next thing is that is best to focus on.
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Whatâs wrong with a time tracker? If youâre billing a client, you need to know how much time you spent on them. If youâre tracking internal projects, then itâs still worth knowing where your time is spent and if it might be better spent elsewhere. If itâs work hours that are tracked, then thatâs a solution for âUnregistered overtime.â
Might solve overtime since you always record it, or do you? If you record the overtime you spend on internal projects it's gonna have a bad impact on your ratio of client work to internal work. What you spend 20% of your time on internal projects, your colleagues only spend 10% there - but I work 50h/week instead of 40, but no one looks on this.
Another problem is when your company doesn't have any work for you and you gonna figure out where to book the 8h of doing nothing but waiting for work that day.
Yeah working with timesheets sure is fun work.
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When you work on the same thing for 8 hours a day for years and then suddenly management decides that they need "detailed time tracking."
They just gave you a new job without additional compensation. New responsibilities, no new title, no raise, etc.
Thenâmonths laterâthey realize that everyone's spending at least half an hour, regularly to figure out how they're spending their time. Some bean counter adds up how much that costs in real money and thenâout of nowhereâmanagement decides they don't need detailed time tracking anymore.
Iâll offer a different explanation: After checking for a few months they realized that allâs good and that the tracking isnât needed anymore.
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Iâll offer a different explanation: After checking for a few months they realized that allâs good and that the tracking isnât needed anymore.
So they got their feelings satisfied with only a major annoyance to everyone and about a month of work wasted among everyone.
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I imagine this is a problem mostly for people who do all of their time tracker recording at the end of the week or month or whatever billing period they have. This requires a lot more thinking and time, and thus becomes a problem, compared to just filling it in at the end of the day.
Just a guess though.
I've a slight manageable case of ADHD and I tend to obsessively hyperfocus on tasks. It's a good relationship because I get a lot of shit done well, and enjoy my work.
If you start forcing me to plan out my day every day, down to 15 minute increments, my productivity drops by around 60%, because I stop concentrating on getting shit done, and start working to rule. Not because I'm vindictive, but because that's what you asked me to do.
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Oh c'mon guy, just work your magic
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If this were a 5x5, I'd have the free square in the middle be "aI-pOwErEd"
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For my team it's been "oh your out of work? Let's just pull in another card for you from the backlog"
And then they get pissy when the burn down chart looks like a camel, finishing at the same place we started.
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A BRAND NEW CAR (emoji)
Can't I at least have a sticker?
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Any extra points for hitting the "Finished the feature?" square three times for the same feature?
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No requirements = nothing done, all requirements met
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I've a slight manageable case of ADHD and I tend to obsessively hyperfocus on tasks. It's a good relationship because I get a lot of shit done well, and enjoy my work.
If you start forcing me to plan out my day every day, down to 15 minute increments, my productivity drops by around 60%, because I stop concentrating on getting shit done, and start working to rule. Not because I'm vindictive, but because that's what you asked me to do.
Is that what people mean by time tracker?
I meant just writing down what you did and how long you worked on it during that day.
I'm quite lucky, I just have to basically fill in "8h" every day on the same project and then I'm finished. But other people are forced to be very detailed and it sucks.
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That depends on your team composition. Decoupling story points and hours means that the points indicate the complexity of the task; each developer might take a different amount of time to deliver that depending on their ability and expertise in that part of the system. The points give you a simple metric to show how much complexity the team have left to deliver, and tasks get assigned to whoever is best placed to deliver them at the time.
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Story points are evil because they were intended to help teams set achievable goals but are almost never used as such. Once a manager catches wind of this practice, they will bastardize it into a pile of shit most high. Scrum doesnât prescribe this practice so ditch it. Reject it and move to something only the team members will understand. If you move to relative animal sizes or some shit and you meet your goals, managers can fuck right off.
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If this were a 5x5, I'd have the free square in the middle be "aI-pOwErEd"
Weirdly, after a certain percentage of useless meetings (that should have been an email) it does become more productive to make the AI "do the job": not because it's actually efficient, but an AI is never interrupted for a pointless meeting for hours.
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if i fill every space, what do i win?
Return to office mandate and a slice of cold pizza.
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Whatâs wrong with a time tracker?
I've worked in once place where I was support (no projects, all work came from and was tracked in tickets). Since everyone had to use the time tracking system anyway, I had to enter 8 hours every day. I was salaried, so no OT or docked pay for time off; I entered the same 5x8 every week, regardless of what or when I worked that week. Pointless.
Another time, I was subcontracting and had to enter time for the same projects for both my employer and the company that hired us. My employer wanted time submitted twice a month, and the hiring company demanded weekly. Tedious.
Two of these three companies were irrationally anal about pre-filling the time sheets, even when the hours were well planned or functionally irrelevant.
Last time I had to track time it was on a shitty spreadsheet that had to be printed out and signed by my boss. I was salaried. There were usually no changes from week to week.
They also had a digital time tracking solution that they just refused to use because that would involve change and change is bad.
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My project is doing 12 of those. Guess who has another job interview round next Friday?
You're getting job interviews?
