After a ton of agile coaches who thought they can teach us SAFe safely and a bunch of wannabes who blindly implemented these ceremonies without knowing the value of the same, it is time to ta-ta the Project Management Office.
They do nothing but impede engineering.. ideally they should complement… hardly the case. We do Agile wrong.
DRT was ancient but much better.
Here's an answer for the next mtg.
Any blockers? Id--ts like you who know nothing about engineering, planning, or being respectful.
The PM's add NOTHING to the execution of any project, in their current role at TD. Projects tend to succeed in spite of the them, rather than because of them.
They immediately burden the entire project staff with nonsensical and extremely granular project schedules, that have to be readjusted everytime somebody is out sick or the team runs into a technical challenge (so, every weekly meeting).
99% of the PM's energy is invested in those project schedules, to the point the PM is not useful to the staff for anything else. "Project meetings" consist of an hour of bickering and due date adjustments, rather than discussing the details/logistics of the actual project. Puts vendors off because they are not used to that either.
Most of them know nothing about the technology their projects involve, and have to have everything explained to them verbatim. Adding additional burden on the engineers and people actually performing the project.
TD should explore Agile project management, using Kanban or something more iterative, rather than restrictive.
PMO a s0v13t-style authoritarian ruling party
Even after all the documentation and meetings, random clueless people question your work since they have no clue, having a bad day, or have an agenda to make you look bad and promote themselves.
what about wiki, powerpoint, email? I think I must have spend at ~10 to 15% of my time everyday to work on these tracking/document, or I will get ding on my performance review..
Do we need four tools to track our amazing strategy? Kendis, Jira, Aha & the McKinsey thing
PMO provides zero value but had several fancy micromanaging reports and SAFe waterfalls
That's like asking if we need car accidents. Too many bad drivers with no engineering or planning skills. No talent in PMO and I see more bad talent in the pipeline.
Seems like all the terrible planners and non-engineers think they know more about engineering than engineers.
Oh, I don’t know. They’ve done a bang-up job so far, right?
Bad processes and PMs who think they are in charge. Need more engineering leadership and input.