Remember extreme programming? Iterations, ballparking, velocity, refactor, release planning. We still use some of those words but the meaning is gone. All that is left is a convoluted mess of chaos. Nobody is listening. Let us go back to something that worked. XP wasn't perfect but when we had self empowered teams we could fix what was broken. Now we just have to plunge ahead over the cliff.
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What's with laying off employees and keeping a contractor on the Destiny team?
It just gets worse and worse. It is almost like someone wants to sabotage the company...and it is working.
Thanks Tim R for reassuring us that staffing would stay the same for the next year just before laying off 41 people.
Release plan = make a long list of stuff + pick a date + ignore everything the team says. Start working on stuff for new release before finishing the current release. Add new stuff as you go along. Push team constantly to start new stuff even if they aren't done with current stuff. Works great.
What team are you on? I'm on the reader team and it doesn't feel as bad as you describe. You do make a good point about ballparking not being done by the team. Although, we are supposed to re-align the complexity points if the current value doesn't make sense for a given task or story. It isn't the same as ballparking, but it does help management determine what a subteam is capable of doing per "iteration", which in turn helps them figure out what can be done in a given release. It's a different method but ends up with the same result.
We practice agile "to a degree". We use the terms but they don't have the same meaning. The word "Iteration" doesn't mean much if you are constantly pulling stories (Kanban) and it doesn't matter if you are done at the end of the iteration. "Ball parking" is done by one person, not the team. Release planning just means promising an impossible amount of work while ignoring the team. Unit tests are ignored for months and there is no time for refactoring while trying to hit that impossible goal.
At FSS, yes, all of the work is done by Follett employees, not contractors. I'm not sure what team the OP is on, but the one that I'm on still practices Agile to a degree. Perhaps it isn't like we used to do during the "Destiny-days", but we still have iterations, ball parking, refactoring, and release planning.
Is there any development being done by Follett employees. It looks like all development is done by freshers as part of Infsosys, TCS and Intersoft. Most of IT has been outsourced and the remainder will be soon. No reason to Follow any programming methodologies except what those companies say. I was a developer let go two weeks ago.