Death to the P1!

I often hear developers and product owners talk about all the P1 issues on the storyboard or in the backlog. They need to stop it. It is only the order of the backlog that matters. Having stories that appear to equal importance confuses the developers and encourages management to think teams can work on many parallel work streams. Worse, cynical programmers will laughingly say ‘everything is a P1, except for the other stuff which we’ll never do anyway’ and they are often right. If work isn’t worth doing soon, it shouldn’t be at eye level for the teams, so calling a bunch of stories low priority will sound their death knell.

Product owners can steer themselves, and stakeholders towards lean and agile productivity by avoiding talking about buckets of priorities. It’s hard of course, especially with product work that spans multiple teams, instead talk about how stories, features or epics relate to each other. ‘Is getting the biplane flying more or less important right now than the catch the pigeon feature?’

Probation periods or punishment periods?

Having changed jobs I'm currently in a probation period. I have, for a time, lost many of the advantages of full time employment I previously had, and it feels like a punishment for exiting my last employment. Recent family events have made me think quite hard about things like fitness, healthcare and pensions, none of which I'm entitled to during my 6 month probationary period.

I can, grudgingly, understand that the notice period is short during this period but withholding employee benefits feels like mixture of punishment and old fashioned 'you should be grateful for a job' thinking. When you're trying to hire clever, in-demand individuals who want to work in autonomous teams where their contribution and commitment is valued, you need to reflect those qualities in how the company treats its those new employees day one.

And as my friend Ian Cackett pointed out, it actually shows you're not confident enough in your hiring procedure to trust that you've made a good hiring decision. That makes me nervous about the company. Have you hired badly in the past and don't think you've fixed that yet? So actually, who should be sitting on the naughty step?