Ah yes the forgotten land of uncompleted tasks. Slated to be a hotfix when it becomes a problem.
I don’t know when this meme was originally made, but my boss unironically has this taped to his office door, and it’s glorious
Everywhere I’ve ever been,
If it’s lower than “High” or “2”, it’s as good as “backlog” :)
(There can never be a priority “1” and seldom “Highest”, never “Blocker”, otherwise the CEO gets a text or something.)
Scrum Master: “Do we really have to make it a blocker?”
Me: “Uh yeah. It’s blocking these three other tasks.”
Scrum Master: “But is it really?”
Me: “Yes.”
Scrum Master: “Let’s just leave it on in development and we can review the progress tomorrow.”
Me: “That’s what you said yesterday.”
Scrum Master: “Alright guys. I’m going to give you back five minutes of your time today.”
At every company I’ve worked at there were basically 3 priority levels - normal, stuff the client says is urgent, and the stuff that’s actually urgent. “We’ll fix it later” is basically for the week in December that everyone’s on vacation and the juniors have nothing to do.
Lol, I love that week. Feels so productive working on low priority shit that’s been around forever
Yet the solution is so simple. Let the them spend 20 – 35 % of their paid time on backlog. Let them refactor the architecture. Let them improve the code base. You know, that thing the Lean book talks about, the part that everyone overlooks, the part so critical yet so often overlooked that others wrote books that ride that one aspect home.
But why do that when instead you can just pretend those issues don’t exist (or simply fail to understand them) and secure a bonus/promotion/personal favour by cutting “unnessecary” labour costs then celebrate by burbling on about how capitalism “maximises efficiency”.
I’m a Senior developer, and I’m still playing the part of the Junior in this meme.
I hate it when people insist on leaving their trash lying around where I work.
