<story><title>Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model (2019)</title><url>https://erikbern.com/2019/04/15/why-software-projects-take-longer-than-you-think-a-statistical-model.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mpweiher</author><text>&amp;gt;  in a meeting-heavy agile environment&lt;p&gt;Everytime I see that, I cringe.  But sadly, you&amp;#x27;re not wrong.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Agile&lt;/i&gt; is anti-meeting, anti-heavy and definitely anti-meeting-heavy.&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t know what to call this weird thing that was created.&lt;p&gt;Just as an example:  why are there standups?  Because in XP, meetings are &lt;i&gt;frowned upon&lt;/i&gt;.  So the idea is not to have meetings whenever humanly possible (better to pair up, talk to individuals etc.).&lt;p&gt;And if there&amp;#x27;s a meeting you really really can&amp;#x27;t avoid or eliminate, let&amp;#x27;s at the very least incentivise everyone to keep it as short and meaningful as possible.  By having everyone stand and thus be slightly uncomfortable.&lt;p&gt;How that fun, focused, no-nonsense, get-things-done approach got turned into ... whatever that &amp;quot;meeting-heavy&amp;quot; thing is ... is in some senses fascinating.&lt;p&gt;And terrifying.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;m currently in a no-jira, no-meeting, get-it-done environment&lt;p&gt;AKA, an &lt;i&gt;agile&lt;/i&gt; environment. ¯\_(ツ)_&amp;#x2F;¯</text></item><item><author>steveBK123</author><text>Another factor here is in a meeting-heavy agile environment, many engineers can&amp;#x27;t even give a good forward estimate of the number of &amp;quot;in the zone&amp;quot; hours they will have in the coming week.&lt;p&gt;Will I be on 0 outage calls or 5?  Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I am on pager duty rotation or not..&lt;p&gt;Will I get pulled into 3 calls this afternoon or 0?&lt;p&gt;Is my boss gonna come bother me with some urgent non-ticket task tomorrow morning?  Etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m currently in a no-jira, no-meeting, get-it-done environment and I find myself getting tremendous amounts of work done for the first time in nearly a decade.  I would not have estimated my ability to get 1&amp;#x2F;4 of what I have gotten done, done.  My last 2 jobs were basically the opposite.  Everything took 4x as long as it should..</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Frost1x</author><text>&amp;gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t know what to call this weird thing that was created.&lt;p&gt;Micromanagement. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Micromanagement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Micromanagement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a new concept, agile and project management tools around it decided to break things into small enough components that they essentially just streamlined and concretized micromanagement as a normal accepted daily business process. That&amp;#x27;s all &amp;quot;agile&amp;quot; is in practice in most case. If you see &amp;quot;agile&amp;quot; substitute &amp;quot;micromanagement&amp;quot; and everything that happens will make complete sense.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model (2019)</title><url>https://erikbern.com/2019/04/15/why-software-projects-take-longer-than-you-think-a-statistical-model.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mpweiher</author><text>&amp;gt;  in a meeting-heavy agile environment&lt;p&gt;Everytime I see that, I cringe.  But sadly, you&amp;#x27;re not wrong.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Agile&lt;/i&gt; is anti-meeting, anti-heavy and definitely anti-meeting-heavy.&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t know what to call this weird thing that was created.&lt;p&gt;Just as an example:  why are there standups?  Because in XP, meetings are &lt;i&gt;frowned upon&lt;/i&gt;.  So the idea is not to have meetings whenever humanly possible (better to pair up, talk to individuals etc.).&lt;p&gt;And if there&amp;#x27;s a meeting you really really can&amp;#x27;t avoid or eliminate, let&amp;#x27;s at the very least incentivise everyone to keep it as short and meaningful as possible.  By having everyone stand and thus be slightly uncomfortable.&lt;p&gt;How that fun, focused, no-nonsense, get-things-done approach got turned into ... whatever that &amp;quot;meeting-heavy&amp;quot; thing is ... is in some senses fascinating.&lt;p&gt;And terrifying.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;m currently in a no-jira, no-meeting, get-it-done environment&lt;p&gt;AKA, an &lt;i&gt;agile&lt;/i&gt; environment. ¯\_(ツ)_&amp;#x2F;¯</text></item><item><author>steveBK123</author><text>Another factor here is in a meeting-heavy agile environment, many engineers can&amp;#x27;t even give a good forward estimate of the number of &amp;quot;in the zone&amp;quot; hours they will have in the coming week.&lt;p&gt;Will I be on 0 outage calls or 5?  Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I am on pager duty rotation or not..&lt;p&gt;Will I get pulled into 3 calls this afternoon or 0?&lt;p&gt;Is my boss gonna come bother me with some urgent non-ticket task tomorrow morning?  Etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m currently in a no-jira, no-meeting, get-it-done environment and I find myself getting tremendous amounts of work done for the first time in nearly a decade.  I would not have estimated my ability to get 1&amp;#x2F;4 of what I have gotten done, done.  My last 2 jobs were basically the opposite.  Everything took 4x as long as it should..</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>orra</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t get me started. The agile manifesto says “individuals and interactions over processes”. So, &lt;i&gt;of course&lt;/i&gt; a whole industry popped up of managers (and agile consultants) prescribing scrum.&lt;p&gt;In practice, it&amp;#x27;s not unlike waterfall, because requirements and timetables are prescribed from above. But hey, the team has a sprint kickoff meeting every two weeks, so we call it agile.</text></comment>