Add story points to your JIRA tickets and make sure they're either 1, 2, 3 or 5 points, but if they're more than 5 points, they have to be split into multiple 5-point stories, and points don't really mean anything but they also mean exactly how many days you're going to spend on them.
Oh, yeah, and meet your commitments! We'll tell you what your commitments were.
It's actually exactly the same as they way they "managed" projects before Scrum (and before XP, which Scrum itself is a bastardized version of): "tell me everything you're going to do, and then tell me how long it's going to take, and I'll provide value by asking you every day if you're done with it yet. See, I'm justifying why I make more money than you do!"
Don't forget your tps reports.
You see, this is how scrum really works as without this, how would we be able to control development timelines? Also mumbling compliance means it just has to be this way for unspecified reasons!
The leadership team came back and said upon further review, the project would take 3 months.
I was so relieved to hear we could get 8 months of work done in just 3!
That’s why executives get paid the big bucks!
It’s unbelievable how useless some of these planning and estimating sessions are.
Work in defense, can confirm. Add "increment planning" where we plan the sprints out 3 months. Also, voting on points? Naw, someone yell out a number and that's that.
In an "agile" way, of course. You can be agile, you just have to say weeks in advance when you're going to be agile so we can plan around it.
Who can sprint forever? It doesn’t make any sense! When do we rest? When do we train? What is this metaphor!?
Oh, right, because you're supposed to sprint it because that's maximally profitable (in the short-term, anyway).
Any lowly Boeing engineers reading this - my condolences... Truly.
But, of course. The productivity of the team they hired last month was just horrible, they didn't manage to finish anything! Of course they were fired.
Someone kill me, please.
When the actual engineers were blank about how much something costs, they had to sit through a 90 minute meeting of group-costing.
Naturally the team delivered very little despite being quite skilled. But luckily the blame fell on the lead and not on the ICs as it usually does.
That’s what is keeping so many of them silent: a mortgage, school fees, maybe a H1B.
They’re the ones that aren’t afraid whatsoever to rock the boat or do what they think is right, and are actually able to drive change.
Lazy people tend to self sort into irrelevance.
Those issues already surface in any situation, but it's safe to assume that many hold their tongues because they're afraid of losing their income stream.
I think a great deal of their ability to drive change is because they know the right things to say to the right people. I.e. they have some diplomatic skills.
Because while they might be able to afford to lose their job, they certainly won't drive any change if they actually do lose their job.
Diplomacy helps, but mostly it is about being open about problems and about pushing that info up the chain of responsibility. If you need diplomacy for this point, you already have a severe problem here.
Otherwise the head will also fumble. I have been in expensive meetings talking a lot about parking space organization. This always happens if there is nothing interesting related to the business to talk about. Stuff gets off-topic quickly.
That said, change and disruption has a positive connotation in the business of today. But it isn't always positive.
Then, in my eyes at least, you're talking about either relatively minor things, or things which already fall in the bailiwick of the leader. I'm just a line person with no one under me who could last a max two months without a job but I have no problem communicating problems up the chain. I'm probably naive, but I'd think most other people wouldn't have such problems either. If they do have problems this seems like an organizational issue that even the leaders SteveNuts mentions in the GP wouldn't be able to change.
If a billionaire slams his toe on the leg of a chair, it still hurts, and being sorry for his real pain isn’t denying his otherwise staggering privilege. It’s an excellent example to use to have him empathize with others. If you want to make them act in society’s interest, you can point out that paying taxes or enforcing environmental regulations won’t prevent them from being rich beyond words.
An engineer worried about being fired experiences genuine distress: you can empathize with that there and then because it’s real. Once they have a job, ask them to be more considerate when designing processes or buildings so that everyone can work comfortably in the shade or without having to fear how they are going to feed their family by the end of the week.
This. Or crowdfund a mega million dollar bounty for evidence of certain types of malfeasance.
The market seems to generally punish whistleblowers, and understandably so. I have never worked for a company that wasn't violating some contract, regulation, or law. In my first job we were forging stuff for PCI compliance. The next job stored medical records in a Git repo.
So most people have something to lose if there is a whistleblower personality around, as much as we might admire them when they reveal the secrets of others.
I wouldn't want to work with one. I am not a manager and even as a low level individual contributor I cut regulatory and security corners to keep bosses happy.
You would get far more whistleblowers if it didn't essentially mean wrecking your livelihood, even if you are willing to sacrifice your career.
Yes and:
Make whistleblowing-for-hire official.
IIRC, there's a law practice whose sole activity is suing prescription management practices. Basically forensic accounting meets administrative law.
I want more of that.
Further:
Winner-takes-all seems to be some kind of natural law. And by extension, regulatory capture. Civil society needs countervailing mechanisms that exist outside or separated somehow.
I most like ensuring pro-competition and anti-monopoly policies.
But monopolies will always exist, eg natural monopolies like utility districts and police, so we also need transparency and accountability hacks like you're suggesting.
I do believe that good engineers like their work and drive a lot of self-esteem from it being valued—more than living off a stipend because they shot their career in the foot. It’s well-paid enough they rarely think they need to rely on the generosity of strangers, and that’s not a bad mindset to keep.
In circumstances like these, people talk about loyalty, notably to their employer; I don’t think loyalty is a bad value, but in that case, you want to advocate for loyalty to the craft and the corps, not the organization profiting from putting people in danger. Engineering values, like the brass ring some get in Canada, are things that you want to support not by saying “we’ll support you if that blows in your face” but “We want people like you to speak up during our meetings.”
Giving engineers a guarantee that their craft, their talent and their willingness to ask tough questions is what you value, as a team lead, is something I occasionally can do (not now, though: changing team) and something I’m happy to compensate at fair market value, because it’s objectively a good thing for me too — not because that would put me at odds with my organization, but I’m willing to sacrifice that for some ideal misaligned with profit.
We need to work on getting eggheads at Boeing understand that their cost-cutting was a bad idea (SkyScanner letting you filter-out plane time is beautifully aggressive that way), but in the meantime, we need to tell people facing tough decisions that engineering is full of hard trade-offs but that security is not one of them, and not one that should need charity.
So this is willfully producing a less than superior product, which, when it comes to airplanes, is basically criminally negligent since it will result in a crashing plane that kills people.
Not sure how execs are so capable of dodging culpability, but I'd say the real issue is our justice system holds no one rich to account.
>>Boeing outsources a lot of the production of components for its aircraft because it’s cheaper as part of an overall shift in strategy that dates to CEO Harry Stonecipher who had been CEO of McDonnell Douglas,
>>>> "When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."
IOW, the McDonnel Douglas, now Boeing, CEO deliberately wrecked the engineering firm to make finance primary. In my book, that merits being tarred, feathered, drawn, and quartered. He's putting millions of lives at risk, risking the defense capabilities of the US, and already killed hundreds. All to line the pockets of himself and his cronies.
The only question is whether the engineering organization is too far lost to reconstitute.
An MBA designed the door plug installation process?
Maybe it’s the Boeing engineers that need some scrutiny?
or, what can engineers possibly know about engineering: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213075
Cost
Quality
Time
MBA push for cost, then time (to market), above quality.
Heck, they fired the last CEO over the 737 crashes but he was literally only on the job for 3 years and had no involvement with the 737 design. The problem? He was an engineer and he was already stirring up shit inside. So they threw him under the bus and replaced with him another useless goon that spouts PR bullshit and has no technical experience other than milking companies dry.
If you believe it should be engineers, we're fully in agreement, but then why do we have managers...
Hiding MCAS to avoid recertification was well above the paygrade of an engineer at a bench poking a circuit.
Also, if you want a short version of how this stuff goes very wrong even when engineers do say something, the challenger disaster[1] movie is great. Chase it with the NASA documents[2] for the long version.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvv2-7iOD_8
[2]: https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/genindex.htm
Edit: typo
"We need to replicate the pitch performance of the 737-800. These engines pitch the plane up when accelerating and it messes up go-arounds."
"What if we have the computer just pitch down to compensate? We know the angle of attack and the engine thrust output."
<implements>
Meanwhile in another conference room:
"United is telling us that Airbus is giving them an A321 for 10% less than us. What can we cut?"
"No regulation requires us to have 3 angle of attack sensors. We could get by with 1 and stick it on the Minimum Equipment List if it fails."
"That sounds great."
Then the 1 angle of attack sensor fails the system that was designed for 3. Was it the engineer who agreed to hack 737-800 handling emulation onto the 737 MAX that failed here? Was it the engineer that agreed that the AoA sensors didn't need to be redundant, perhaps before MCAS was even invented?
These complex failures are rarely the result of one individual failing. Everyone did their job; the business saved United 10% (I actually have no idea who their launch customer was), the engineer saved thousands of pilots from being pulled off the line for re-training. But combined, it was a tragedy. Ultimately, it's the organization and its processes that failed, not an individual. As a manager, you own the organization and the processes.
It absolutely was the fault of the engineers who failed to realize what would happen with an AOA fault. I'd love to be corrected, I don't believe a single email from the engineers to management telling them would would happen was ever dug up. And, there's never been an engineer whistleblower saying "I warned them."
Has a single PE lost their license over the Max?
This is false. At the time of the incident (>1month) The FFA and NTSB found 23 reports of uncommanded pitch down attitudes during takeoff.
Quick Google gave me this.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/it-pitched-nose-down-us-...
Turns out the Max8 does have two angle of attack (AoA) sensors.
But the MCAS system only read from AoA1, and never validated it against AoA2. It was recieving info from AoA2, but never used it!
You can do something with 3 or more, but 2 are completely useless.
If there is a mismatch, the system outputs an error and MCAS will disable itself.
In fact, that is literally one of the requirements set by the FAA to begin flying the Max8 again
> FAA Airworthiness Directive approved design changes for each MAX aircraft, requiring input from two AoA sensors for MCAS activation, elimination of the system's ability to repeatedly activate, and allowing pilots to override the system if necessary.
Can they all be fired and the wealth they leach redistributed then please? :)