New answers tagged project-team
1
The word SPOCK has different meanings.
According to freedictionary.com, SPOCK is an American pediatrician, educator, and writer.
Spock can also be referred to as a testing and specification framework for Groovy and Java applications. Spock is compatible with most IDEs, build tools, and continuous integration servers. What makes Spock stand out from the crowd ...
1
Are you sure that you are "on agile"? Or do you mean that you plan in units of 2 weeks?
To me your problem sounds like you (or the product owner) might not explain the purpose of what you are working on. Keep in mind that "agile" was originally restricted to being co-located, meaning the product owner would be easily approachable for questions of ...
2
I don't want to write a bible but just a couple of simple suggestion.
First: try to create more smaller task, more simple where is very simple to estimate the work load and the work time. If you have a big task, break it in two or more small sub-task
Second: Already suggested, create and define good acceptance criteria: if the result doesn't match the ...
1
The alternative approach frequently used in the past is to design architecture so that it would be many weakly coupled modules, and assign a module per developer or two. This gives much more individual freedom than everyone working on everything under then necessarily strict rules and supervision, and does not necessarily result bad software as each ...
2
You actually listed 5 problems:
Tom delivers buggy code.
Tom doesn't always complete his stories on time.
Tom makes up his own version of the requirements.
Tom creates his own stories.
Tom thinks he can do whatever he wants, because he's the most "experienced" developer on the team.
Is he aware of these? Have you discussed these issues/patterns explicitly ...
2
You’ve let a culture become established in your team. This culture once established, is much more difficult to change.
Regardless of whether Tom is acting as a team member, he IS still a team member.
So how do you modify Tom’s behaviour such that he maintains his sense of worth and still provides you with reasonable outcomes that align with the goals of ...
4
Let's consider Tom's motivation for his behaviour. He mentioned that he wanted to be a Product Manager and that suggests he clearly enjoys this kind of work.
Tom's behaviour is currently a problem, but I wonder if his motivation can be harnessed to add value?
For example, consider Behaviour Driven Development. Somebody like Tom would likely thrive on this ...
5
I work as a developer and can so clearly see myself in the shoes of Tom; I guess he reminds me of myself. I can see in your profile that you've written about Tom in July as well, so I realize that this is great concern of yours. Of course I don't know the details about your situation, but I will try to elaborate my own view.
It has happened to me that I ...
3
Other answers have focused on the interpersonal skills involved. I'm going to suggest technical/process fixes.
The main problem is that you think you're on Agile, but you're not. You're on hacking random shit together over a period of time, and that's not Agile. Tom thinks he can blackmail you into accepting his changes because otherwise the sprint fails. ...
3
If he consistently misses deadlines, he must never be a project manager.
If he can’t be trusted to honor requirements, he must never be a project manager.
If he argues with management direction, he must never be a project manager.
Without denigrating the other good answers, I would add here that another thing to do with such a person is make the above ...
3
This sort of thing isn't as uncommon as you might expect. At the top level, you have basically three options:
Work with him to "behave" and meet the requirements within the sprint cycle. That's what most other answers seem to focus on (and therefore I won't add anything further), and should be your first recourse.
If, no matter what you do, you can't get ...
18
Flater's answer is really good; let me add something that will also help: Acceptance Criteria (AC).
Acceptance Criteria
Every single story should have Acceptance Criteria, describing the functional effects of the story with a binary (true/false) answer.
If a story is incorrect or lacking details, then this is the fault of the team during grooming/planning....
35
Tom is an unguided projectile. Regardless of why he does what he does (whether he believes himself to be better or simply lacks proper guidance), the core issue here is that he not only second-guesses any information/objectives that you give him, but he will independently decide to follow his own instinct.
if the wireframe puts a blue color button, he ...
6
This is a problem most of the PMs face when there are really skilled Developers in their teams.
My answer will be a practical approach to handling this issue.
I hope you have been a PM for quite some time and have experience and have established yourself as a PM in the organization. Basically, you have a say in the organization.
Since Tom is an ...
4
This is a behavioral problem and not specific issue which can be addressed by any framework or development methodology. As a leader with specific goals to be achieved in defined timelines you need to develop strategies which helps you achieve the goals.
You might be doing many of the standard suggested practices as well, but it will be helpful if you can ...
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