Subj : Re: Expect/standards/lineItemBilling (was: How much should I charge...)
To   : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp
From : Randy Howard
Date : Sat Aug 27 2005 10:15 am

rambam@bigpond.net.au wrote
(in article <87wtm7pz4z.fsf@kafka.homenet>):

> rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
> 
>> I tried to look up "story point" in both Google Web and Google Groups.
>> Virtually all references were to literature (writing fiction).
> 
> Then you need to learn to do a search.

Why bother?

> A search on ' "story point" programming' brought up several documents 
> that discuss story points and how many story points a pair programming
> team can handle each week.

Anytime you are worrying about counting story points, or lines 
of code per delta_t, or 'programmer activity units' or any other 
made-for-the-slideshow gibberish, you are working to make some 
micromanager happy, not to write code.  Programmers don't give a 
hoot about 'story points', they care about meeting (and 
hopefully exceeding) their project requirements and schedule 
without compromising quality.

Spending 6 months out of every 12 memorizing a new set of 
made-up terms to describe some supposedly novel way to write 
software may be interesting for project planners, and keep them 
going to nice seminars adjacent to interesting golf courses, but 
for everyone else it is a colossal waste of time.

(It does of course open up a financial bonanza for the evil 
folks that descend on these new buzzword festivals with training 
materials, certification programs, books, self-paced CD study 
kits, t-shirts, motivational posters and of course, special 
high-$$ software to track all the new buzzwords as the lemmings 
meander through the new labyrinth now created for them.
Here's an example of the mind-numbing stupidity expressed in the 
latest incarnation, 'story points' from google searching...

"Managing estimation and keeping with deadlines is always a art 
than a science."

Let's pretend like that is a well-written sentence and keep 
going.

"... But it doesn't mean we can not utilize the science at all 
for project management."

I knew this was BS for managers and planners.

"... Robert Martin suggests us two charts that can be very 
useful hanging on wall -" 

The author is functionally illiterate, but we finally get to 
something...

"... 'Velocity Chart' - illustrating, week by week, how much 
work is actually getting done?"

Hmm, sounds like something a project planner would keep track 
of, but is basically irrelevant to programming.  What needs to 
be tracked is how much is remaining.  Since development isn't 
linear, like walking at nn miles per hour, you can't really 
measure that all that well either unless the person doing the 
measuring is extremely experienced, knows all of the project 
details, and has worked with all the team members long enough to 
be an accurate predictor of their likely forward progress rate 
given the remaining problems.

"... 'Story Points Chart' - week by week, how much work remains 
to be done in the project."

Ahh, there we are.  A story points chart, doesn't that sound 
lovely?  Well guess what.  It's a dated to do list, although 
when created by people that buy into lingo instead of action, 
it's probably not as informative.

And here we have an open admission of what I was saying 
earlier...

http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/s=8958/sdm0312f/sdm0312f.html


"Well, herešs the bottom line: Agile methods are merely a 
technique for managing software projects. Their purpose is to 
provide managers with the data they need to make timely 
management decisions. And this should be good news for those 
project managers who know that managing a software project often 
involves more prayer than science."

So there is the smoking gun, it is to make managers happy.  Note 
that it doesn't say anything about better, faster, cheaper, or 
anything that might actually be useful, but gives them better 
charts for their powerpoint presentations to the next layer of 
morons in the meeting next Tuesday.  Don't pretend like "make 
timely management decisions" means anything valuable.  It means, 
"should I ask them to work late and slide a pizza under the lab 
door before I knock off early to bang my secretary?". 

-- 
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)

.