If you want to drive me completely bugfrak crazy, here’s what you do:
- Set me the task of fixing a system I know nothing about.
- Give me just enough time to analyze the system and get to the point where I juuuust barely understand it.
- Let me find the flaw in the system, and get an inkling of a solution.
- Take me off that task and set me on another.
- Repeat.
Do this enough times and I abso-effing-guarantee you I will go completely postal and do something rash. Like…I don’t know…make hum-bao from scratch. Or apply for a transfer to another group. (Trust me. In my case, that’s rash.)
I mean, seriously now, how hard is it to plan resources three weeks in advance??
I have, in the past two weeks, been told to work on three different items.
- First, I got deep enough into a system to point out a flaw in the proposed solution
(“Um, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”) - Second, I analyzed a different jobstream, wrote up the documentation on how to fix and test it, only to have its funding pulled.
(“Were you awake during the budget meetings, sir?”) - Now I’m onto the third system in less than ten days. And this system is one I started work on a couple of months ago, got thigh-deep into, and got pulled off in favor of some other hot topic.
(“British Rail regrets that all memory of that subject has been purged from our system.”
This is not Agile methodology. This is Headless Chicken methodology.
The problem with the Agile methodology (where we’re supposed to be “nimble,” and teams are supposed to be “self-directing”) is that it takes all of the responsibility away from management. Since the teams are “self-directing,” management doesn’t have to bother with the actual management of work anymore. They can concentrate on their dashboard metrics, their guiding principles, and their roadmaps. They can take their retreats and their meetings and just throw priorities around like flaming torches (“Hey, you! Catch!”)
This isn’t Agile’s fault (not entirely, anyway). It’s management’s fault for applying only the bits of Agile they want. Dump all the responsibility, but keep all the authority to steer these “self-directed” teams like an over-amped teenager on a sugar-high playing Xbox. [twitch, twitch, twitch]
Management in corporate America no longer manages. They simply point. Thataway!
I’m going to go make some hum bao.
k
“Like…I don’t know…make hum-bao from scratch. ”
How *quaint*! 😀
LikeLike
I’ll be posting the recipe soon.
LikeLike
ooh!
LikeLike
Just don’t go juggling no baby geese, now… 😉
LikeLike
I never learned to juggle. It’s one of the things that keeps me humble.
LikeLike
Good man.
LikeLike