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Admin
Frist? :tada:
Edit: great article. I'm not a dev, but I deal with "process" and "bureaucracy" a lot at work, and you make a lot of really solid points that organizations really should address for almost any set of rules/guidelines. Sometimes you smother innovation with your process, and the people that can see its effects can't make a good justification to the people that control your process as to why it needs to be changed from a "business value" standpoint. But this article seems to marry both viewpoints into one. I like it.
Admin
No, there was a whisper before you.
<!-- Filed Under: A new way to troll -->Admin
I used the acronym PMO here in the forum quite recently. People were :wtf: at me. Thoroughly enjoyed this rant, nearly went on my own during our migration from MKS Integrity to TFS. Our PMO department seems to have disappeared from the company, leaving us stuck in a botched together process that nobody can question or change (because process changes need to be approved by PMO, who is non-responsive). Oh well? I guess?
Filed under: Told you so!
Admin
Nope. Just Paula's usual hidden
[image]unlistedmessage:Admin
I've worked in three kind of places:
###Big ones with so many processes getting shit done took forever.
Lay low and go with the flow while polishing your resume and getting some experience. Don't try to fight your way against the "process" because this has been set by people who were here before and will be here after you.
Small ones. No process.
Great, you can get shit done, but a week after the project has been done or after the architect leaves the company or the project manager changes, you find out that the project has no documentation, the decisions documentation is dispersed between emails, tickets, basecamp and spreadsheets; the project is so broken you want to burn it and start all over again. A process would have helped to set at least a minimum set of standards, like fucking write documentation, automate, use versions and fucking learn how to use git.
Medium growing to a full PMO
Medium company with some processes so shit can be done and shit can be maintained in the future by someone else. Great job. Success. Growth... and then someone decides a PMO team is required and they start changing all the processes, adding more processes and you start seeing how all the team starts to look for greener pastures where it doesn't take 5 days to do a release. After three years you've got a whole new development team, yay!
Admin
Posts before or contemporary with the publication of the thread don't count.
Admin
Admin
Not your finest moment? That's probably true, but it's still bad that occasional blunt truth-telling is so much out of favor in large organizations.
Admin
I have certainly seen my share of buzzwords = process. When you ask why we're doing something a certain way, and the answer is "Amazon does this" or "Facebook does this" or, [tech darling of the week] does this, it's not really productive. OK then, give me a staff and budget comparable to Amazon, and then we'll talk about process.
Admin
I think that a bit of:
Is just the ticket in a lot of places. :heart:
Admin
I love having a productive process.
I'm not sure I've ever experienced one.
I guess working on a thing without having a say in the deadline, and getting blamed when the thing doesn't do what it's supposed to is technically a process. Or anything where you have to work around general management disorganisation and get the blame when shit doesn't work (which is how I have a short list of individuals who I actively cyberstalk to avoid working with them).
I assume this is the kind of thing I'm up against: the attitude that a process makes for a lack of creativity, meanwhile I've experienced first-hand that a lack of process makes for a toxic environment, which results in a lack of creativity.
Either I've worked in some atrociously shitty environments, or other people work in places with their heads buried firmly up their own intestines. Maybe I'm inflating the attitude I'm referring to (I hope so).
Admin
I've never even had the opportunity to work somewhere more than 2 years and 9 months. I've been employed since 2007.
Admin
My record was about 3 years.
When interviewing, I'm always suspicious of the IT people who have been at the same job for 5+ years. Does it mean they aren't growing as a developer? I mean maybe the place they worked was just that great, but. Seems unlikely.
I love this job but I might have to leave because the office move turned the commute into crap and the work location into shitcrap. Who can work in a place where there's no local bar for happy hours!?
Admin
My current mega corporation has processes to review new processes but not put any sanity into existing processes. As an example, each year the change management process gets a little more convoluted. Here's the current process:
I asked once if some of the systems could be combined or if anything could be streamlined. Answer? "We are reviewing the currently process...."
Admin
Great article. As an example, a few months ago I was called in as a consultant to a large and rich company to figure out how to modify one of their factory processes, like right that day.
They should have known, if they had read the documentation, that they could just enter the new data and things would just work. I read the documentation and told them "just enter the new data and it should just work". That wasn't good enough for them, they wanted me to rack up some hours looking at what I would have to change in the source code. I knew it was probably "nothing", but I rarely turn down free money. A week later I billed them for 40 hours and told them, truthfully, that I looked over the source code and it should need no changes. I though that would be the end of it.
Two weeks later I get an email from some guy I'd never heard of, he was the "Project Manager" for this project, and I was invited, along with SIX other people, to a "kickoff" meeting. More hours billed, and I sent them a six-point checklist of what hey had to do. (1) Type in data. (2) Test (3) Verify test. (4) I somehow strung it out to six points.
Noooo, that wasn't good enough. Two the the six people had to write process planning documents, the others had to write testing documents, and then run tests. Fortunately for me another part of their bureaucracy has timed-out my laptop login so I can n longer track how that one sentence solution has morphed into a full-scale project.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, this project manager who is building up this huge structure of paperwork is part of the "small project team".
Admin
I really, really don't want to know what their big project teams look like...
Admin
Great article. There's always a need to have balance in process.
Whenever I think of process gone awry, I think of the end of the ham (doing things that don't make sense) or wheel tappers (doing things that make sense but not knowing why)
Admin
#1 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
#2 TFS <-> Project integration is a SERIOUS and complex situation, despite the claims of "install a plug-in and flip a switch". Nearly every company that I have been involved with who have enabled this lightly have had serious problems. Most have had some type of data loss or corruption. Many have disabled it, and either lived with the damage, or reverted back to before the switch was flipped and loosing months of work.
Admin
Only someone who is dead inside.
Admin
At a company I used to work for, one of the company's core values was, "We tell the truth and don't make excuses." The CEO had quite a temper, and I think most people were at least a bit afraid of him (I sure was). Despite getting even angrier when he was lied to, from where I sat, it appeared senior management's main occupation was CYA, rather than being honest. Somehow, though, when the feces impacted the rotary air impeller, it was always the fault of the guys in the trenches, not the lying VPs.
The PMO in that company was mostly sane, except for the process of getting specifications approved. The number of people that had to approve the specification for any product was quite long, and it typically took a week to get all the required approvals. The project schedule was part of the spec, and the last guy to sign off on the spec would always reject it, because by the time he got around to it, the schedule was out of date. This would go on for weeks until the guy writing the spec actually violated the process by writing the schedule based on the spec's anticipated approval date rather than the submission date. Even better, at least from my point of view, the senior engineer in charge of the project was also the PM chasing signatures, so he/she would be spending 99.9% of his time doing PM tasks, and 0.1% doing engineering, so this had a negative impact on other engineers, like me, who were depending on him for engineering deliverables.
Admin
No. I'm dead inside, I still find it intolerable.
Admin
You're not wrong, but from the perspective of Project Server administration, they just needed to flip a switch. From that point forward, all administration (and potential data loss) was restricted to the particular Project Server Projects created to use the feature, and the TFS Team Projects configured to use the feature. None of the existing Project Server Projects would have been impacted by the change, and we had a plan in place for communicating the risks to our customers.
Admin
I've come to the conclusion that every large company eventually introduces so many processes and bureaucracy that they can no longer function effectively. In which case someone else comes along and takes over their marketshare.
Admin
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Admin
This is often an evilution from
Small ones. -> Medium growing to a full PMO -> Big ones
and then the last and most toxic step: Government mandated processes: Big ones, only worse.
Admin
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/61165042.jpg
Admin
Ima steal that, if that's ok?
yoink
Admin
That's fine. I stole it from the 'net anyway…
Admin
Now that sounds like a government mandated process to me :-)
Admin
Jerry Pournelle is a pompous ass but, for a change, he's close to on target here. There are two types he's left out
Thirdly - Those dedicated to covering their asses and ensuring the blame, if any falls far away from them.
Fourthly - Those dedicated to their own advancement at the expense of types 1-3.
Note that these types actually define an orthogonal basis set for a four dimensional space.
Admin
You're right about those guys, but I think they will still fall into one of the other categories.
Admin
Agreed. Valid categories, but not orthogonal to the other two, nor even to each other.
Admin
I agree. I find that places where most of the IT staff has been there for a while are very stale, stagnant and adamant against changes They are very much "drunk on the kool-aid" and only want to do things the way they've always done things, often because management fires anyone who wants to do things a different way.
Admin
It helps to have an alcoholic boss. We are about to do our second office move in 18 months to a place with even more bars within stumbling distance. One is known for its broad range of beers on tap. Apparently the new office is getting a tap with promised kegs!
We are in range of www.fridaybeers.com.au so :beers: anyway!
Admin
When I was in Tampa, a year after I'd been at the job, they moved us all out of one building to another a couple miles away, closer to downtown. The ONE positive to the move was that we were next door to the mall, which meant we could walk over there for lunch--it was just crossing the parking lot. Most of the people in my department went to the bar&grill there every week on cheap burger day for supper. They had about 30 beers on tap.
Admin
Process? Just wait until someone mentions "Risk". I know that everything has risk, and unfortunately the "higher ups" think that you might trip over cracks in the pavement. So, you mention anything and they mention risk.
Of course there is a risk of doing nothing, but nobody gets that far.
Admin
Admin
i can't help but think of a short story in a book: the famous Mitchel Kapor used to work for Visicalc, but he got fed up with them, left, and formed his own company, Lotus. in his words, "visicalc made the mistake of bringing in professional management. that drove them into the ground." why haven't you heard of Visicalc? because Lotus BOUGHT them!