I've worked for companies like this. What's hilarious is that most of the employees at these companies take the process very seriously (they obviously don't know better). I've worked at both startups and big companies - I find that fine-grained management in big companies is extremely inefficient. In software, the more constraints you add to a project, the slower things will progress.
It gives non-technical managers extra visibility at the cost of speed and agility.
I can't help but chuckle to myself whenever we have a 'retrospective meeting' - Every single time, it's the same problems that come up over and over again (related to management/communication issues) and these problems never get fixed.
What's even funnier is that the closer we get to a deadline, the more meetings we have - And the more it slows us down.
There is a fundamental problem with having very fine-grained cards/stories/tasks; often, related tasks are assigned to different people but it would have been much more efficient to assign all these tasks to a single person.
>>> It gives non-technical managers extra visibility at the cost of speed and agility.
Keen observation. Often times these situations are just self-inflicted wounds on the part of devs too. I have worked with many devs that have had a habit of keeping stakeholders and coworkers in the dark just because they feel like they are too important to be bothered/be held accountable.
I know what I'm in for if a project management or glass house CIO is all of the sudden needed, so my top priority is always to primarily earn the trust of business stakeholders and to be as honest as possible.
> It gives non-technical managers extra visibility at the cost of speed and agility.
Hmm, just like with tracing. The more finegrained tracing, the more resources are used for communicating what you do and less resources are going into actual doing. Developers understand this, managmenet may not. Management IS about communicating, so they try to "Do Something" and enforce more communication.
It gives non-technical managers extra visibility at the cost of speed and agility.
I can't help but chuckle to myself whenever we have a 'retrospective meeting' - Every single time, it's the same problems that come up over and over again (related to management/communication issues) and these problems never get fixed.
What's even funnier is that the closer we get to a deadline, the more meetings we have - And the more it slows us down.
There is a fundamental problem with having very fine-grained cards/stories/tasks; often, related tasks are assigned to different people but it would have been much more efficient to assign all these tasks to a single person.