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#jobs-discuss
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2021-07-29
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Aron05:07:12

A question mark is not a question 🙂

lsenjov05:07:30

The question it asks is as specific as the criticism given 🙂

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Aron06:07:18

But it's not a question, it's peer pressure, it's pointing out disagreement and that you shouldn't express such vague, negative feelings towards industry conventions...

lsenjov22:07:27

It’s difficult to disagree or have a conversation on something when the argument is that vague. The question mark is to invite more information without breaking the flow, not to shame someone into hiding

Aron23:07:36

Intent can be relevant, but it's ultimately not the most important thing in clear communication.

seancorfield05:07:03

"following buzzword methods" 🙂

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dgb2310:07:49

We have an unfortunate tendency to make simple guidelines complicated, especially if they are organisational. Formalising the informal without rigour and categorising while ignoring unknown context. Agile is one such thing http://apparently.It can somewhat be boiled down to: Let’s not pretend we can specify and understand a thing in its entirety and focus more on discovering what it is together, closely with the people that use it. It is a call to accept our fallibility but also to respect our ability to grow, learn and empathise. Uncertainty is unavoidable so let’s focus more on the human side and build trust and understanding.

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gklijs12:07:37

Yes, imagine Agile + Police, which is a very hierarchical orginisation. We had Senior Product Owners while we did not even see the Product Owners much.. Getting things done was far from Agile..

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dgb2312:07:02

Product owners, something masters etc. are just new terms to describe top down hierarchical organisational structures. Just call them managers and be done with it. “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.” and “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” All of these things have a strong underlying theme, which is direct, human connection based on trust. If you take that away, everything falls apart and you are stuck with a proliferation of rules and processes that try to patch over this defect.

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dgb2310:07:19

But somehow there are people who are so afraid of trust, that they felt the need to invent all kinds of rules and games around this simple idea, perverting it into something completely unrecognizable.

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dgb2310:07:07

This is very pronounced in discussions where someone claims that “Yeah, XP is nice and all but it only works with excellent/exceptional people”. Well how do people become excellent and exceptional? Surely some of us have it easier than others but the bulk of it is practice and experience and the willingness to learn. We cannot learn if we cannot make mistakes, and we cannot make mistakes if we are not free.

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Aron13:07:47

Yeah, but most "agile" setups are not about freedom or being the best, it's about digital taylorism, it's about the new person being able to integrate asap, without additional training period, it's about them being able to "ship solutions/features" regularly, not about them making any mistakes. Mistakes are welcomed in an environment when it's understood that we are experimenting, but no company I worked at was this the norm, the accepted default, instead, in the best case scenario, you could spend time and got support to do it on the side.

dgb2315:07:49

shipping features quickly without training sounds exactly like experimentation to me

Aron15:07:47

What are you trying to say, that my english usage is incorrect?

Aron15:07:05

Because that might be, but kinda beside the point I was trying to make...

dgb2316:07:15

Just kind of sharing random thoughts. Your english is fine, certainly better than mine!

dgb2316:07:46

What I was trying to say is that if we don’t fully understand the hole, what works and what doesn’t in advance, so we ship features quickly and regularly (throwing things at the wall and see what sticks), then that is still experimentation, or rather discovery, regardless of whether we label it as such or not. And whether we want it or not: mistakes will happen. I don’t think that this is inherently bad. Mistakes happen so we can learn. It’s very unfortunate that in some environments, this isn’t seen as something positive. I couldn’t cope to be honest.

Aron17:07:30

It's not just not bad. But this whole topic is a bit too much for this discussion I think: https://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map_feb09.html

Aron17:07:51

However, the way you put it, it seems as if people not allowing experimentation is all environments is a bad thing - which is not what you said, but could be seen as if you were saying something similar. Also, it seemed as if you were saying if people were doing it because they just don't understand it, but that's also not the case, in most cases it's done because they do understand it.

Aron17:07:49

Happy to talk about it, but not to write more. It's been a lot already and can't be too specific without writing a novel 🙂

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dgb2317:07:35

I see what you’re saying. Conventions, structure, clearly set goals and time intervals make the described process efficient like a well-oiled machinery, but this approach is only possible because the goals are well understood. Good point 🙂

Aron17:07:58

Yeah, most businesses are as close to being franchised as possible, because that's what's required by the professional class on the finance side, completely validated by technocratic reasons. (e.g. with books like "e-myth revisited")

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