These people look pretty agile, no?
I hate corporate buzzwords more than anyone, so when my company decided to implement the agile workflow for our development team a couple of months ago I was naturally dubious. My main objection to it however was that our team was already very agile. In fact let’s have a quick look at the agile manifesto from the Wiki page:
Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
Working software over Comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
To me this sums up what our team was already doing, so why the hell we decided we need to piss everyone off by introducing idiotic terms such as:
- Sprint – Basically just a 1 or 2 week chunk of work, usually followed by a code release. We were already doing this!!!
- Stories – This just refers to a bug fix or particular project or part of a project you have to work on. In other words “a bit of work”. I don’t really know how any team would work if they didn’t already have some version of this!?
- Scrums – Simply refers to teams (e.g. real and meaningful terms like “backend team” and “frontend team” now become meaningless, infantilised names like “red scrum” and “blue scrum” …*pukes in mouth*… and so on). Luckily no one has tried calling any of our teams a scrum yet, if they do it might tip me over the edge 🙂
To add insult to injury, we also have to have a 2 hour meeting before every “sprint” to comment on and estimate the time that will be taken for every single “story” that is due to be worked on (or should that be “told”?!).
Every.
Single.
One.
So that means I am hearing about and attempting to estimate for things I have no idea about, and likewise people are doing that for my projects as well. If that doesn’t strike you as Pointless, then I’m Richard Osman.
On top of that, there is also the daily stand up where people tell you what they did yesterday and what they are going to do today (wake up at the back!). To be fair, although further wasted time, it is only about 5 minutes, so I can deal with this one.
However, the final dog turd on top of your agile ice cream sunday is that they then have to hire a product manager who is no doubt getting paid twice as much as the average developer to spin us all this bullshit and keep us in line.
Look… Let’s get things clear, I’m not against having a defined workflow and proper systems in place so developers 1 can get on with their jobs. I am not even against having product managers. Someone has to have an overview of what’s happening in all areas. What annoys me is (clearly) all this buzzword rubbish that is just redefining things that have existed for decades that then seem to somehow justify someone’s ridiculously high pay-check. These people act like they are performing the dark arts when, from my perspective, pretty much anyone with slightly above average organisational skills could do their job. The way I see things is that if I can do your job, but you cannot do mine, I should get paid more than you.
Alas, it doesn’t seem to work like that (and I’ve known that for years), but money isn’t everything as we all know, so it’s not worth dwelling on much more than an occasional blog rant 😉
Agile – The Good bits
That’s the rant bit over! 2 Never one to only present one side of an argument, let’s find some positives in the agile process:
- We’ve started 2 week code releases instead of 1 – More time to write and test code before it goes live.
- We get bugged less by marketing/random people to fix bugs, like, right now! – Everything has to go through the product manager now so we are getting less ad hoc requests.
- More cakes and sweets – OK this isn’t helping much when you are trying to keep the sugar intake to a minimum but it’s nice to have a treat every now and then!
Getting Some Agile In Your Life?
I almost cannot believe I am saying this but the original premise of the post was to explore the idea of running some of the agile processes in my “real life” (minus all the bullshit buzzwords, of course!).
Just think about it, we are all pressed for time, we all have a “to do” list a mile long, things we want to achieve whether short or long term goals. On the other hand we constantly have other people vying for our time, because they want to see us (which is obviously nice), or occasionally because they may have a different agenda to us (which could be bad).
So is having a more formal system in place in order to get our shit done really the worst idea?
Why do we think it is ok to have all of this stuff laid on us at work, yet in our private lives we just go with the flow?
Many of us will utilise the classic “to do” list and this no doubt works wonders. I haven’t made one for a while, and feel I have been particularly unproductive over the last few weeks. I can feel the pressure of the many unwritten down things I want to get done building up on me, for example!
So maybe all I am talking about is making time for our own “pre-sprint meeting” every 1 or 2 weeks, to write down some “stories” 3 for what we want to get done in that next period. I think this doesn’t sound too dissimilar to FFBF’s “weekly rituals” he laid out in his 2015 goals, and while I think I’ll pass on his “daily stand-ups/rituals” 😉 I think a weekly or bi-weekly task setting could be a good idea. I have therefore added this to my 2015 goals list.
There are some obvious downsides of this, and it will be a balance to see what works best.
I don’t want my whole life to become one long list of things to tick off: Wash car, tick, go and see Nan, tick… and so on. We need some randomness and spontaneity in our lives (well I do anyway!).
The counter argument, well, goes straight back to the very first argument I made really. Time is short and we must write down and prioritise the things we want to do, otherwise people or other external entities 4 will end up filling up our time.
It’s kind of a sad state of affairs that I (for example) feel I have to write down that it is a priority to go and see my Nan, but it is what it is.
Things that should be priorities seem to get lost very easily in the fast, interconnected, insanely busy, dare I say… Agile, world we live in.
I expect many of you can relate.
Notes:
- Replace with your job title, as I am sure this kind of thing happens across all industries ↩
- I have to admit I wasn’t even planning on that when I started the article but got a bit carried away. And as usual it felt gooooood. 🙂 ↩
- Sorry… I said without the bullshit buzzwords didn’t I? No more! Promise ↩
- That sounded a bit ominous didn’t it!? Anyway you know what I meant. 🙂 ↩
Discussion (33) ¬
I feel your pain. We had these stupid phone conferences every single workday, and in the tedium I came to realise a profound truth.
The world of software development and me were parting the ways (pair programming was another thing). I do my best work on my own, I am not a team player, I am an individual and not a cog in the machine.
The course of action became increasingly clear. I first switched to using a legacy skill that fortunately was i ndemand for a while and then focusing single-mindedly on the urget business of clearing off from the workplace 🙂
> Time is short and we must write down and prioritise the things we want to do, otherwise people or other external entities will end up filling up our time.
That is that FI is for. So you get the choice to tell those outside influences to go take a running jump. As well as the choice to go “hell, yeah” to others.
I don’t have a to do list. I have some elements of this problem Most of the win is shooting the noise dead. Taking the time to think straightens out a lot of stuff.
Haha, I knew the ermine would be first to comment on this one 😉
Luckily we don’t do pair programming that much right now but it is mentioned often as if it is some sort of holy grail of working that we should promote. Beats me why. You are always slowed down to the lowest common denominator in pair programming so it’s not any more producitve. Then we have the learning/knowledge sharing aspect… I just find that the person who is less skilled generally doesn’t learn to work out the problems encountered by themselves, so whether they are learning anything is actually debatable.
I agree that is really the big goal of FI for most people I think, definitely for me at least! Having time to think is really a scarce commodity nowadays… I look forward to when that(/those) day(s) come(s)!
Hi TFS
Great post! Your company sounds a bit like mine, where there are buzzwords galore! Don’t get me wrong, some of them I think are great and they do really work. Others not so great, they get introduced by HQ and just cos it works for them, they think one size fits all. It doesn’t.
Our current buzzword is ‘simplification’ – pretty much reviewing our processes and simplifying them. In some areas of the business, it’s worked wonders – has cut down real man hours and rework, reduced time and paperwork. In other areas, some processes just can’t be simplified and time is being wasted reviewing every step to see if it can be removed! Pointless.
That said, in the same way that you can add some Agile to your life, I guess I should add some simplification to mine. Sorting my wardrobe out will be one but it’s just not a task that I relish doing!
Thanks weenie 🙂
There have been many fads of buzzwords over the years, simplification is actually one of the ones that at least means something in real life… rather than taking a holistic approach to reorganisation of processes or whatever crap some of them come out with.
Read the hilarious bit about Scott Adams on this link… I found it while googling some bits for this post, I should have included it in the main post but here it is anyway:
http://www.bollocksphere.co.uk/Content/Business.shtml
He convinced the executives to replace their existing mission statement for their New Ventures Group, “to provide Logitech with profitable growth and related new business areas”, with “to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission-inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.”
🙂
Scrum Master to your personal life? I have had some on the job Agile experience too. My problem is chunking the project into all the tasks and having to track all the parts of the project being worked on and completed. Too much tracking over-head under the User Stories and the whole premise of Agile is to have a dedicated team to the project yet nowhere I have ever worked allowed you to be dedicated to one project team, we are shared over several Scrum teams. I have had up to 5 or 6 daily standups by being on multiple project teams which is a royal pain. I can see if using a version of Agile correctly in your personal life how it MIGHT work. It sure hasn’t for me when I was working. That said, all of this Agile buzzword bullshit has caused me to throw up a little in my mouth. I need a beer.
Haha! I feel the same around the buzzwords.
Scrum master to your personal life just sounds wrong doesn’t it!?
This was interesting because I’ve only heard of agile project management with reference to the Universal Credit implementation and the fact that it seemed, in this case, to fail as a methodology and had to be scrapped.
In my own organisation we’re still sending people on Prince courses but, in practise, only actually pay lip service even to that. Project management is a bit of a joke given the fact that staffing’s falling to the level where just keeping things going is becoming very “challenging” and there’s no money for development anyway. With worse to come.
This strikes a chord though “These people act like they are performing the dark arts when, from my perspective, pretty much anyone with slightly above average organisational skills could do their job” – it’s so true, there always seems to be more people working out flowcharts on how best to do the job than actually doing the job 🙂
Interesting piece FS. Thanks.
The cynic in me wonders whether anything could make UC work. Sometimes it’s not so much that the locomotive is broken, it’s on the wrong track pointing the wrong way… We don’t need universal credit. We need a universal citizen’s income, because there are fewer and fewer jobs that Mr Average can do, cos the computers are getting smarter.
I love the CW article – it was a great laugh
“By adopting an agile development approach, it has reduced the time it will take to deliver Universal Credit by almost half,”
I was once a keen young engineer but green to management speak, and for the first ten years of my working life I believed it when Mr Big Cheese held all-hands events to explain to the grunts “This Brand New Idea XYZ will Change Everything”
but slowly it dawned on me that reorgs change the names on the doors, eliminate 5% of the staff, but otherwise just rearrange the chairs and the wallpaper. Observation shows genuine innovation in business methods comes at a glacial pace. Agile is just the current name for the same screw-ups and wishful thinking that were going to make things faster, better, cheaper 30 years ago. There is no silver bullet. Making things work is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
What we need to do is permit Big Cheeses only one reorg every three years. At least the grunts could get some work done in the middle two years!
Hahaha.. brilliant comment ermine!
We had two “rebrands” in the space of about a year because the marketing manager left just after doing a rebrand, and the new one wanted to make his mark. A lot a busy work for the designers and devs = Net extra profit to our company, I am guessing zero; The Powerpoint presentation showing all the lines going up since the new rebrand has been noticeably absent which I think tells us all we need to know on that one!
Thanks Cerridwen!
Yes it does boggle my mind the ratio of planners / managers to actual people with skills building and creating value. Why don’t people want to go to Uni to learn how to actually do something rather than just learn how to “do business”. I suppose there is more money in the latter…
Hi TFS, I currently work in an ‘agile’ project team. It’s full of people using trello boards full of to do lists and no real big plan of timescales. So at the moment ita a project that’s over a year late, with lots still to do and no real time control. It’s not the only example of this I have experienced so I am not a fan of agile. I have seen two other projects running under agile rules and they are also late, one is over 1 year late and still going and the other was eventually canned by the business as it was running late and the costs were spiralling out of control because of the overrun. It should work but I have not see a successful project under this style yet. I will be glad when I pull the trigger and leave the office cubicle.
Hi SparkleBee,
Sounds like we are starting to have a general consensus here 😉
We use a similar thing to Trello. In all fairness it does the job ok.
I think agile is probably ok for shorter term projects but year long+ ones as you alude to it takes the focus away from the bigger picture!
Really interesting to read about the agile model in your work, and also in various people’s experiences as per the comments above.
I am a huge fan of trello and anything else that helps to get your sh1t done, but as per SparkleBee’s comment, you need to have a proper overview as well as an efficient day-to-day task manager.
I am all for making things more efficient and streamlining procresses and practices. It’s often in little sneaky life hacks that we can make life a bit less stressful and annoying on an everyday basis. For example, when I’m cooking dinner, I try to use as few pots, pans, and utensils as possible. I also try to ‘wash up as I go along’, meaning that there isn’t a huge pile of stuff to wash after dinner. This saves a lot of time and effort, and saves me the guilt of feeling like I’ve left the kitchen looking like a bombsite for my husband to clean up. Okay, this isn’t exactly following the agile method, but basically in principle, I believe streamlining your tasks is really useful.
Cheers
I agree with the streamlining thing M, who wouldn’t?! Your example is a perfect one because you often have 2 minutes spare here, 1 minute spare there, while waiting for things to cook or pots to boil, so why not multitask and use that time productively, rather than, say, checking facebook on your phone then spending 15 minutes washing up later on. I have seen the same two types of attitude in the work place, some people when they are waiting 15 minutes for someone or something to happen before they can get on with that they are doing, are straight on facebook (or whatever), while some will read up on some articles about programming, or research another bug they need to fix, etc… I know what category I’d rather employ/work with!
Cheers!
I left my corporate job almost 2 years ago for a freelancing career. Until now I consider I did the best thing. Today I’m more in the FI area than in the RE but I have time to plan it and to work for it.
Glad to hear it Mihai!
Thanks for chipping in with the comment. As someone looking to go down a similar route that is the sort of thing I want to hear 🙂
Good luck with your future plans in reaching full ER.
Ha, yeah… At my place of work, they are now using “flexible work spaces” for the office people, meaning nobody has their own desk, and everybody comes in real early to get one of the best desks for the day. Everybody suffers from having to drag their stuff around, and the noise levels are high, too. Luckily for me, I don’t work in the office, so this is not my problem. Perhaps the best part about this is that even the highest levels of middle management are subjected to this treatment… so I’m expecting a revolt shortly and a return to when we had “real” offices…
Haha… that’s funny as we are having desk space issues right now as well.
Even more… the upper management are the ones who don’t have permanent desks while most of us grunt work 9-5’ers do – as they are out of the office a lot on business meetings it doesn’t make sense. Again in all fairness to them, they don’t complain at all and just get on with. But I still find this quite funny 🙂
This is a really interesting post, because I am a Front-end Developer, and I like Agile methodologies such as Scrum, but I am also heavily interested in FIRE 🙂
A few things I wanted to mention randomly from your article:
1. I hate buzzwords and talk about this on my blog
2. When I first came across Agile I felt exactly the same way as you and it took doing it wrong a million times followed by doing it successfully to really understand and feel the benefit of the approach. It’s way more than going through the motions of naming something a Spring and going to a morning stand-up.
3. Scrum is one particular Agile methodology. The member partaking in that process is called a Scrum team.
4. Estimating is something that nobody does accurately at first and it’s totally different from one project/company/team to the next. It’s the estimating Vs velocity that provides the value to the Scrum team and the business. Also estimating in hours is pointless, so I would heavily advise you to read about that side of things, if you haven’t already.
5. If your estimating about something you don’t know about then that leads to 2 choices normally: a) do a spike/investigation story where the output is the ability to estimate for the next sprint or b) Reject the story. This process flushes out not understanding early. Good for the team and the business.
6. The point of the stand up is to get a really really quick understanding of where everyone is so that impediments are raised and you can be unblocked as quickly as possible. On a good day I will speak for less than 10 seconds, on a bad day it will be 1 minute.
7. In my experience a Product Manager won’t earn as much as a Software Engineer, but YMMV 🙂
8. Again, I hate buzzwords, but I think it’s a mindset and methodology way beyond just giving existing processes different names which of course is pointless.
9. If they act like they are performing dark arts then they are probably not very good. The great Scrum Masters/Coaches I have had the pleasure working with, tend to act as a servant to the Scrum team. They are meant to report and gently steer the team into a better direction.
10. I have a really simple Agile process at home. A simple task board with stickies so that I don’t forget – todo -> in progress -> done. I quite like it for two reasons: 1) I get to remove all the things floating around in my head and 2) I get the good feeling of marking them as “done”, but YMMV 🙂
11. I agree with the downsides to having a process at home. It’s not nice seeing an endless stream of mundane tasks but a retro about that might help 🙂 Try automating things, try removing unimportant things, try delegating things etc
I am sorry if this is a bit statementy, but I really wanted to get some thoughts down as I read a lot of your stuff, and we have a lot of common ground (coder and FIRE stater). I hope they help.
Look forward to reading more of your articles.
Hi Adam, great to e-meet a like minded fellow!
Thanks for the detailed comment, I won’t reply to everything as I agree on most of what you’ve said anyway but…
2. I’ve clearly been overly harsh about agile, I am already enjoying it more than when we very first started it and can see it has a lot of benefits. I just fancied a bit of a rant if I’m perfectly honest about it 🙂
4. Estimating is always way off at our place but as you say I think this is a very widespread issue. We tried estimating in “complexity points” but no one liked it so we are back to estimating in days again 🙁
5. Interesting point. No one has ever mentioned rejecting a story before. Maybe I will bring this up in the next sprint review (after reading a bit more into it)
6. I was kind of playing devils advocate on the stand ups. I actually don’t mind them but a lot of people on the team think they are pointless.
7. I applied for a mobile product manager position that was for £100K + Bonus about a year ago (I never really wanted the job and didn’t think I would get it, but they contacted me so thought why the hell not). That is far more than what I am on now and more than senior software engineers job adverts I am looking at recently, so that is what I am basing my assumption on. I have no doubt that wages vary wildly for each position so yes I agree, YMMV!
9. Again I’ve been overly harsh on our Scrum master/product manager. He is a thoroughly nice chap and is doing exactly what you’ve described! It’s just taking things a while to bed in I think (We all know people don’t like change. As much as I hate to admit it, I am the same as everyone else!)
10. YES!!! I am exactly the same as that on both points. I have a TODO notebook now, but I may well move onto the stickies system as that makes things much easier to move around. We actually have a huge blackboard on the wall so may employ that instead to save on paper 🙂
Thanks again for a great comment, lot’s to think about there and I hope you stick around and air your views in future
Cheers!
Do we all work for the same company? Or is there a Corporate Buzzword HQ that issues and distributes meaningless words annually? Thanks TFS for explaining what a Sprint and a Scrum are because we’ve been having them for a while and I’m clueless. Corporate speak is damaging to business because the grammar is awful, sentences are meaningless and no one really knows what anyone is talking about. Exasperated, I’ve now taken to asking people in plain English “What is this actually about/what do you mean/I don’t understand you?” Most recently this was directed at our Communications Manager of all people. This means I’m probably in line for imminent “Simplification”.
It’s no wonder we all want FI.
In terms of making life simpler and freeing up time for the things that are really important (like seeing your Nan), I can only suggest from personal experience that the more possessions I let go, and the more I minimise to what is important, the less time I spend cleaning, maintaining, buying cr*p, and the more time I spend doing the stuff that matters. But I salute a list, I love lists.
Haha, that made me chuckle Starla… asking the Comms manager what they are trying to say! Oh the irony!
This is a good point about minimising the possesions. I do feel a bit of a slave to the house right now, what with tidying up all the garden and then a long list of DIY projects after that, but I wouldn’t swap it for the world.
Maybe the best I can shoot for on that one is to spread out the work so it leaves more time for friends, family, and other more important things. Especially those that might not be around forever (whereas my garden will always be there waiting patiently for me to tidy it up!)
I think most FI aficionados are list lovers 🙂
Hey,
Love the blog and a follower of all the PF blog!
I just wanted to swing by and say as a developer who works on an agile team that is ran well, there are many things that people miss about agile:
a) The alternative was traditionally top-down authoritarian development, where an architect tells the developers what to do. Where there are ‘walls’ or ‘silos’ between teams and things gets thrown between them with a minimal communication or collaboration. It is ‘someone else’s problem’. People try design everything up front which just does not work.
b) Why not take one person from each ‘role’ and put them on the same team. In the same room. So they can actually talk to one another.
b) Development is _not_ anything like traditional engineering. It is not a science. It is hard and complex. Especially when you involve people. People problems are the biggest issue in software development. What would _seem_ sensible for other kinds of organisations does not work with software development. We’ve only been developing software for 80 years and agile is kind of the most recent approach that we have come to that delivers reasonably consistently. Constructions, engineering and the combined human experience of them has been ongoing for thousands of years.
I do not want to go into a ‘true scotsman’ argument but things to think about:
a) Take something hard and risky and break it into small tasks. Tell whomever you are doing it that you will show them every now and then to see what they think. That’s a ‘story’ and a ‘sprint’. The words aren’t really important. It’s just rather simple common sense to deal with the uncertainties of software development. It’s just the approach to splitting something down and doing something gradually. Building software is like building a bridge on a moving sand river bank. I do not know what I am doing until I try it!
b) The wall is more of just a way to communicate what everyone is doing. It’s an ‘information radiator’ that does not necessarily require technology. Trello is just one way of doing it. As a manager you can look at a wall and ask – ‘why is this taking too long?’ ‘What can I do to stop this story being blocked from moving from test to production?’
I do not have much to say about scrum masters. We generally let the BAs do that side of things or it be everyone’s responsibility.
I should mention Conway’s Law in terms of developing software as it is particularly apt in describing what happens in most software projects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
You could have one agile team where nobody really gets on or thinks it is working and the software comes out poorly tested, there are blockages, everyone feels it is a waste of time and would rather just be doing what they want, avoid pairing. The project is shit canned.
The other project is with people who really enjoy working with the team, they feel that they get value from standups in the morning to talk about changes in the code base or things they have introduced. They say ‘I am having problems doing X’ and then someone says, I can help you with that after standup.
If you’re finding many of your meetings are taking too much time. Change them. They are not prescribed by agile.
We moved all our meetings to one day of the week. (Iteration planning, showcase, priotisation.) This kept every other day for pure work.
Also consider making your sprints two weeks rather than one week long if you feel too much time is taken up meetings.
Also consider time boxing everything. Why is your estimation taking 2 hours? Try timebox it to 45 minutes to 1 hour. Try speed estimating. Try avoid estimating by committee -i.e, pick one developer, one person from the business. Try relative estimating. There is not correct answer for the team but it sounds like you’re not sharing your problems with the team and finding solutions. (This is usually done in a retrospective.)
Thanks for another great comment!
Interesting link to Conway’s law… I have not heard of that before. Thanks!
I agree that the people are the most important factor.
We have a great team and everyone gets on, enjoys talking about code and so on. I feel I am labouring the point but we’d get on with or without agile. This is a perfect counterpoint to your two examples where you are essentially blaming the people rather than agile… well it works the other way as well 🙂
I am not saying one way is better than the other but really if you have great people on the team then only minimal organisation is needed IMHO as people will organise themselves. Again… I only have experience with small teams so there is clearly a tipping point where that does not hold true.
I like the idea of doing all meetings in one day but then there is always someone important is off that day for that particular meeting, one gets put back in the week. I have had about 5 meeting requests changed in the last week because of this, I don’t know whether I am coming or going meeting wise. Again this is not the fault of agile, but this is how real people are trying to do things. It may “wrong” but this will always happen in real life.
The less meetings you have to go to, the less chance of cancelled/changed meetings there will be… that’s my stance on it.
(We are doing 2 week sprints now and already feel like too many meetings are happening)
I really like your ideas on estimating. I might well be sending an email to our Scrum Master in approximately 10 minutes with those 😉
Thanks again for the great comments! Awesome chatting to you and I hope you comment again in future!
Cheers!
Hello “Developer”!
Thanks for commenting. It’s great to get some feedback from other developers and especially ones who are working well with agile, gives me some suggestions on how we can improve. Brilliant!
I take all your points from a/b/c (and agree with them) but I guess my main point was that this is how we have always worked. We are such a small team and all sit right next to each other. Even then I’ll admit communication can be a little lacking at times but really there is no excuse for that and no need to have to coerce people into mixed teams to force that. However we are growing very slowly, so getting these processes in now is maybe a good thing.
On section two a/b – again… totally agreed!
The wall is a good idea but I have found though that amount of notifications that I get from our version of Trello (Phabricator) is just really quite ridiculous. I know you can turn some of them off but then you might miss the one that is important. If I leave them on then I will almost certainly miss the important one because I don’t have time to read/check them all.
It’s a bit of information overload if you ask me and again… if something is really important just come and tell me, the wall has not improved or streamlined that situation in the slightest. I see there are benefits to it though so it has to stay.
Absolutely spot on!
The description you give to Agile is similar to what +/-70% of the ‘Agile’ environments are…
…and that is not the fault of ‘Agile Manifesto’:
it is the fault of those implementing a general framework to a particular situation WITHOUT A LITTLE COMMON SENSE TOWARDS ADAPTING IT AND ADOPTING THE NECESSARY CHANGES FOR IT TO WORK. You know, one measure fits all kind of stuff!
Thanks for the comment!
I agree to a certain extent that it is the people implementing it incorrectly that is the issue, although however it would be implemented, the buzzwords would still irk me 🙂
I am months behind in commenting on this post. I just discovered your blog through FTP. You hit a nerve with this post as there is nothing more aggravating to me and likely to cause bouts of swearing than buzz words such as “go live” and adoption of fancy pants mismatched plans applied to the people actually doing the work. I am convinced that management comes up with new applications of hell so they can appear busy while creating snowstorms of irrelevant paper work that no one looks at. I have been around long enough to see various revolutions of these ‘exciting’ plans with different names that do not address the real issues. The latest one has to do with a shark and swimmer…..I don’t know I’m busy working. I am enjoying perusing your blog.
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for taking the time to comment, I actually love receiving comments on old articles as it re-validates you for writing them, rather than thinking they are just sitting there in the archives gathering dust and being forgotten about… 🙂
Glad you are on my side on this one and are enjoying the blog.
The shark and the swimmer… what will they think of next!??!! Haha!