Programming

17398 readers

235 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz

Feeling stuck on a never-ending software project (programming.dev)

submitted 8 months ago by yournameplease@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Scene: Surprise meeting with the project owner 0-3 days before the go-live date

"Hey team, the business and I have decided to postpone the project release by n=1-3 months because [they aren't ready for it / it isn't finished /regulatory reasons]. And since we have some extra time now, we can tie up all the loose ends on this project (i.e., 'we've added n+1 months worth of backlog items to the MVP')."

I'm still a greenish dev, so maybe this is normal, but I've had the same story going on for over a year now, and it's really starting to burn me out. In the beginning, I was optimistic. Now I just hope for the project to fail, or me to get off somehow, but this thing just won't die.

Anyone with experience on similar projects able to share words of advice? Do they ever end up working out? Seems there's a death spiral, since we are always rushing to a deadline, forgoing tests and quality but never cleaning up our mess because we're already behind. Yet I somehow feel like I'm the crazy one for thinking this 6-month "quick" side project turned 2+ year half-rewrite will have trouble meeting it's Nth deadline.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] filister@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's the agile mentality, where PO are pressuring you to deliver on your Sprint goals. In my opinion working on Scrums really burns down people

[–] NostraDavid@programming.dev 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just take on fewer points per sprint, if you can't make it every time? Scrum is about becoming predictable, not being the absolute fastest. That's been my experience, anyway. If your PO is pressuring you to take on more, you say "no", because that's your responsibility, not his.

But maybe that's just me.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah wtf is happening here where the data shows you have a story point average and you boss is like, can we go higher?

Like no?

[–] yournameplease@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

We are reasonably consistent with estimates, but there's this hidden assumption that 1 point equals 1 developer day. So even though we consistently get 20-25 points done per sprint, we typically cram more items to meet that 30 point threshold.

Oh, and of course you may end up dragging items sprint to sprint if they don't get finished.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In my opinion working on Scrums really burns down people

Maybe im old but the old way was worse.

Building a project for a year without any feedback then suddenly having to pivot burns people even more.

[–] yournameplease@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

My project fits both. It took about a year before this was shown to more than a couple business users. But we still had Scrum sprints and pressure to get items done at the sprint, even with no deployment or demo for feedback.