Submitted by akinsgre on
in
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I'll apologize first off. I'm writing this in anger, having just gotten home from a very frustrating day.
First, I've said before that I'm not a manager. In fact, our department doesn't have a manager. I'm merely trying to help our software development team become more effective.
A couple weeks ago we began a new approach that identifies a Product Owner as the "leader" of our team, in so much as making decisions about what we'd be working on.
Today, at about 2:30, after our Product Owner went home, our COO communicated with some other members of the company, and agreed that we'd drop one release, add features to another release, and reschedule some of our work activities.
First, he's the closest thing to a manager we have, and I understand the context of his decision.
However, the plan was changed at this late hour not because of any external influence, but because everyone but the product owner got together and decided that we needed this different feature in our software.
'Course, the developers were the ones working late tonight after everyone else had gone home...
The changes we've made over the last few weeks have been recognized "company-wide" as encouraging communication. Seems to me that some other people need to practice communication as well as us geeks ;-)
Does anyone have any advice for encouraging the rest of the company to improve their ability to plan.
And since saying "No" to our external customer's isn't an option, what might be a good approach to demonstrate to the company the effect their lack of planning has on our department.
Hopefully, this won't seem as bad in the morning.
Thanks