There are a lot of comments in here that imply sprints are a necessary evil if you want predictable delivery. I call bullshit.
We don't do sprints. We don't do Scrum. We don't do story points. We have predictable, reliable software delivery on multiple products with an ever growing product development team of 65 people. It's all about measurement and mindful planning.
We are strict about structuring epics vs. stories vs. tasks, and make the largest deliverable an epic. Epics set the scope of what we want to achieve. Then we describe user behaviors / experience we want to enable in terms of stories. The engineering, deployment, and design activities needed to enable those behaviors / UX are structured as tasks.
We say when we want to be done with the epic and try to determine if the scope we have outlined for the epic is reasonable given the self-imposed deadline. Then we measure the growth of tasks in epics week to week. Tasks are expected to grow fast in the first 20% of a project and then start to taper off as more and more of the engineering takes shape.
If we're not following that curve, we hold a retro. If we add stories or change the scope of the epic, we hold a retro. We adjust scope downwards or we change the estimate. We communicate the changes to estimates out to customer-facing teams early in these cases.
The last large-scope new feature we built on our product was scheduled to take 4 months. They were behind by less than 2 weeks, and half the team were rookies. Oh, and no-one was asked to burn the candle at both ends to get us there. No saturdays. No 10pm conference calls between engineering managers and the dev team.
There are better ways to do reliable, predictable software planning than sprints.
Teamworks | REMOTE or ONSITE(Durham, NC) | Principal Engineer
- Python, React, React Native, GraphQL
- Strong SQL skills are a plus
- Strong interest in product development as well as software development is a plus.
Key responsibilities:
- Collaborate with product designers and managers to arrive at functionality that can be developed efficiently and meets end-users’ needs.
- Deliver quality, well-tested code to our API, web, and mobile applications.
- Develop the engineering strength of the team through mentorship, delegation, and collaboration.
- Participate and lead software design and architecture discussions in a kanban style environment.
At Teamworks, we are on a mission to engage and empower athletes. Teamworks currently serves more than a quarter million athletes as well as their coaches, staff, operations, support, and compliance professionals. Athletes and coaches are a fully mobile workforce and expect a seamless experience across platforms for their communications, scheduling, and collaboration.
Teamworks: https://www.teamworks.com | Senior Software Developer | Full Time | REMOTE (USA) or Onsite (NC, but we're all-remote for now because of COVID-19)
We are passionate about empowering student-athletes through the power of technology. Over the past ten years, we have scaled the largest technology network in collegiate athletics and have more experience putting technology in the hands of student-athletes than anyone else in the market. With over 130,000 athletes and 50,000 administrators collaborating through Teamworks, we are a trusted and valued partner across elite athletics pro and collegiate.
Teamworks is the software your favorite collegiate and professional sports teams use to collaborate and to help them coordinate everything from athletic practice to team travel events. We provide solutions to over 1400 NCAA Division I teams, dozens of professional teams, and professional athletic associations.
"With Teamworks, you have a product which is solely designed for team management. Teamworks puts all their focus on operating your team on a day-to-day basis, which as a DFO is the most valuable tool I could have."
-- Mike Parrish, Assistant A.D., Football, University of Arizona
We offer:
* High-energy start-up culture
* Direct impact on the workflows of major athletic and
commercial organizations
* Challenging and exciting work environment in a newly renovated downtown office location
* Work with dynamic technology and a diverse set of clients
* A robust benefits package, including healthcare & dental coverage, 401(k) plus match, free gym memberships, unlimited vacation policy and free parking in downtown Durham.
I'm the Principal Software Developer, Python. If you have a question about our engineering culture, ask me directly, jheard [at] teamworks.com. I'm happy to chat. If you first saw Teamworks here, make sure to mention that in your cover letter. Thanks!
You can't rightly say in either medicine or machine learning that the latter method is "better" than the former. You need the former to make progress past whatever local maximum your buckshot approach gets you. If you don't understand how it works, then eventually all the refinements lead to overfitting in machine learning and superstition in medicine.
Getting More - Stuart Diamond. I still think this is the best book on the art of negotiation.
Getting Things Done - David Allen. If you have adult ADHD like me, and you haven't read this, it's the first system that's really worked for productivity for me.
Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl.
Living Buddha, Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh.
Cosmos - Carl Sagan.
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin.
The One who Walks Away from Omelas - U.K. LeGuin.
Wild Seed - Octavia Butler.
The Heike Monogatari - (tr. Helen Craig McCullough) “The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” If you need a comparison. this is the Japanese historical equivalent of Game of Thrones combined with a bit of MacBeth. The rise and fall of two shogunate families, and an analysis of the tragic flaws of character that brought their fall about.
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett.
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.
The Guide - R. K. Narayan.
Evidence - Mary Oliver.
All of Us - The Collected Poetry of Raymond Carver.
Silence - Shusaku Endo.
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami Haruki. This and the next four are odd choices, perhaps, since it's a surrealist book, but IMO books that force your imagination to work hard do as much for creativity and fresh ideas as any of the more popular methods.
The Well-Built City (The Physiognomy / Memoranda / The Beyond) Jeffery Ford - Surrealist novellas best described as about the protagonist living and achieving agency within the constructs, dreams, and nightmares of a "Great Man's" mind.
I want to see this paired with a Kinect. Walk into a store, select a sweater off the rack that you like. Scan the tag at a kiosk. Get scanned. Customize the fit and color. Come back in a couple of hours with a new garment.