Hacker News Reader

Comment by JamesSwift | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you had a healthy org. The problem with most other orgs is that they do the same planning, with the same care and attention paid that yours did. But then 2-4 weeks after, everything that was discussed and agreed upon and planned around is upended when "priorities changed" or "something else came up" (i.e. the wind slightly blew). For whatever reason, they feel like they are making more effective planning decisions now, by the seat of their pants, than they did when literally everyone was in the same room and putting real thought into the whole thing.

Can you tell I'm not a fan?

View on HN

It's funny because I have the opposite criticism. What I dislike is that when people discover things that need to be done, there is all this pressure to wait months to prioritize that work. Not very "agile"! I already dislike the pressure not to work on things we didn't have a conversation about in a sprint planning meeting, and that's only a week or few. Detailed planning months ahead just doesn't click with me; it feels like guesswork and I don't like guesswork.

You say "for whatever reason", people feel like they are making more effective prioritization decisions in the present than they did in the past, as if there isn't a good reason, but there is: there is more information about the present in the present than there was in the past.

To me, if you aren't updating a plan in real time as information comes into view, then you're missing opportunities.

Yes, something unexpected should change things. I'm not talking about those situations. The situations I'm describing are artificial. The only thing that changed in my scenario is people started getting antsy and playing politics to get their thing more attention than some other thing, both of which were discussed and prioritized in the very detailed all-hands I'm referring to. Or some higher-up asked about when something was going to be done and that spooked the product owner.

In the size of org that does SAFe, I would argue the real "unexpected" priorities that come in and require shifting significantly are few, and likely regulatory. And if you are in that sort of business environment then that unexpected stuff is also theoretically accounted for in the PI planning!

I think more different kinds of organizations have started doing SAFe than you think!

I agree that both real priority shift / additional information based changes and also politically and paranoia motivated changes occur, but I don't think it's as straightforward or obvious how to differentiate one from the other as you seem to be implying. I'm sure many of the clear cut priority shifts based on new information to me have been the obvious politically or fear motivated changes to other people with different context than me.

Personally, I just think a better solution is to prioritize detailed work immediately before it is done, whenever possible.

If something else came up is not allowed it means you need a perfect plan that survives contact with reality. This is possible for short tasks perhaps but not an entire team for 90 days.

If they have completely ignored company priorities that is bad but often it is some technical glitch has come up that moving a box 1px to the left really wasn’t as easy as first thought.

Yeah, "company priorities" is the level I like longer horizon planning to be at. "It's important that we achieve X, Y, and Z in the next quarter", with well thought out priorities and clear communication, then let teams figure out how to deliver.

Why does that sound so awefully familiar? Even worse when you throw in good old re-inventing the wheel, not revise the decisions that should be and giving Agile coacjes and scrum masters more influence over the content of what should be delivered than the actual domain experts doing the work. I'll let you guess what role I have in all of that right now...

Imagine taking a two day course and then going into the office of a law firm or a hospital and micromanaging the staff. Tragic that software engineers put up with this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com