Thread regarding Sabre Holdings layoffs

What's Different This Time?

What's different about this new Sabre Next compared to last time or any time since 2001?

I hear we are going to go to an Agile style now, with scrum teams of 5 to 7 assigned to each product. Scrum teams work on product features not projects. Scrum teams made up of a tech lead, a couple of programmers and a couple of testers. The scrum master supervises many scrum teams and a product manager decides which stories one or more scrum teams working on their product works on. Two week sprints. There will be scrums of scrums to prioritize at the higher level.

It all seems very familiar.

What is the difference between working on a product feature and working on a project?

Wasn't this what we were supposed to be doing for the past 10 years?

Why haven't we already accomplished this change years ago?

Why will we accomplish it this time?

Does the massive shift to offshoring during the past 10 years make any difference to our chances of accomplishing this now vs then?

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14 replies (most recent on top)

Sabre next. The e team plus a few fresh grad developers from a cheap offshore country and couple of scrum masters and product owners. No need for anyone else. Costs will be way down.

Nice Plan!

Did I read it right - no principals, no managers, no sr. principals, no directors, no vp? The plan is solid and structurally sound. Good job

To the delicate orchestral melody of Firestarter https://youtu.be/v8XVZfUqAIs

I'm tha team mastah, codin' instigatah,

I'm tha sprint committed, burn down depicted,

I'm a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

You're a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

I'm a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

I'm tha witch who stated, points insinuated,

Code! I'm tha iterat'n explodid, stand up presented,

I'm a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

You're a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

I'm tha demo conscriptid, rally browse enator,

Code! I'm tha task restrictid, rigid director,

I'm a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

You're a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

I'm a scrum mastah, cert'd scrum mastah,

Scrum Mastah, Ball Blastuh, Spitting out code like a Bangalorian disastah, comply like a robot to your manager bastah, d'oh down they go outsourced command center gonna blow this P0 driving customers away, Fish, Vinit, Promod gonna save the day garlic and curry be coming your way.

It seems nothing teach you people. I am not sure how many ideas and directions generators have mental capacity to comprehend the damage done to the company and business perhaps none at all. We’ve been through that a few times before it is time to understand cheep labor in cheap offshore country won’t make anything good.

Sounds about right.

Sabre can lay off a load of managers and principals in headquarters then hire some fresh grads in a cheap offshore country to replace them in these new scrum teams.

I guess a Principal Developer becomes a Tech Lead in a development scrum team?

If the Developers are going to automate all the unit testing and functional testing then why do development scrums have Quality Analysts?

Once the testing is automated then there is much less need for manual human testers.

I agree about Personnel Managers.

Support Analysts, Operations Engineers and System Owners weren't mentioned though.

Support Analysts can be in scrums. Product Managers should be responsible for ensuring that their support scrums are trained how to provide support.

Operations Engineers can be in devops scrums and System Owners should be in scrums too. Product Managers should be responsible for ensuring their hosted products are covered by a System Owner but only when the product is hosted rather than shrink wrap shipped. The System Owners ensure hosted products are stable and direct Operations Engineers to triage any production problems. Operations Engineers and implement and maintain the platforms that hosted software is deployed onto.

As much as possible is automated, unit testing, functional testing, continuous integration, deployment.

It's a beautiful vision of efficiency.

But Sabre will screw it up no doubt.

I don't understand these PM comments. Product Managers and Project Managers both have a very clear role in this new agile model. Product Managers prioritize what stories the scrum teams working on their products work on. Project Managers become Scrum Masters.

I don't see Business Analysts or Field Techs or Personnel Managers or Vice Presidents or Senior Principals in this new agile model though. I might be more worried if I was in those roles. It would make a lot of sense for Business Analysts and Field Techs to be in their own scrums that Product Managers farmed stories out to. Vice Presidents should probably be in scrums to prioritize strategic product decisions and which product features the Product Managers work on. Senior Principals should be in scrums to define the cohesive standardized technical architecture of all products and to define the technical stories that development Tech Lead led scrums work on.

I don't see any role for Personnel Managers though. The Scrum Masters, Tech Leads and Product Managers eliminate the need for Personnel Managers.

If I was a Manager/Director who wasn't intimately familiar with every feature of all my teams' products then I would be very worried because I would not be qualified to become a Product Manager. As dead weight I would be destined for the next layoff for sure.

@RAEfyVi-byw I am not blaming PM but you have to admit that PMs in Sabre get very worried when we talk Agile and their role doesn’t have a place.......we still need PMs but some teams like the AS PMO stood in the place of progress out of fear. I blame Leadership for not making Agile the adopted norm instead of it some grassroots Agile movement that was to bubble up to their level......that only works in small startups and not company like Sabre.

Looks like now it's PM's fault that previous agile transformation didn't succeed :D Thats some elaborate blame game. Especially, that now it seems that PMs .. will become Scrum Masters. Clearly new role shows scrummish nature of this change as they expect SMs to coordinate, report etc.

It's a great question - what's different this time? Last transformation was led by experts from outside (Agile Coaches), who did some real Scrum work in the past, with great trainings that took several weeks, not some "champions" ad-hoc mentoring that will happen now. Company will need a lot of new SMs, it's expected this will be position not role and Sabre fired some after last transformation so good luck in finding new candidates.

I am typically very sarcastic on this board......what I see different this time is that this is a Top Down command versus years ago where they left it up to each Development Team to use Agile or not. So basically our Senior Management is doing what they should have done 10 years ago but I fear it is too late. However this will only work if we don’t allow groups such as PMO who in AS kept Agile from being 100% successful due to fear of the PM role in the Scrum Team. And we need to not have leaders in Development such as HJ who forces dates, treats his employees like dirt and will do whatever it takes to please customers which in the end has not worked at all for none of the customers are happy. I want to believe in our Senior Management but I fear they are taking action too late.

I get the impression the CEO thought this was about a group of sweaty guys wrestling and groping eachother for a ball and got excited and said "yes let's do that!"

Gets worse

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