FASTER YOU FUCKERS - The ILX Work & Productivity Thread

probably need a thread about work, productivity etc

― but olives are valuable too (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:27 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wanted to start a thread specifically out of things I've been mildly obsessed with recently, very much from a UK, office-based, corporate work point of view - that's not intended to be in any way exclusive: wd like to compare countries around the world, non-corporate work, freelance work etc.

don't know much and would like to know a LOT more about:

the structures and theory of how work should be accomplished: ISOs, PRINCE2 ("used extensively within the UK government as the de facto project management standard for its public projects"), Agile, .

More generally the application of these engineering and software development methodologies to the workflow of human resourcing - or the machine of human resourcing if you like. What effect does this have on people?

Saw an excellent film - Thomas Imbach's [url=http://www.swissfilms.ch/en/film_search/filmdetails/-/id_film/-718785083/synopsis/en/src/150/id_prog/99/search/0]Well Done - a heavily stylised documentary about a Swiss bank:

Inconspicuous gestures, ways of speaking and looks recorded by the camera are woven together in a serial montage portraying a world in which the subtle power of electronic technology shapes communication between human beings and leaves its traces in the most private spheres.[/i]

In this early '90s films the physical structures and requirements of work are the major elements - humans are represented in the process as a necessary but minor element, part of a larger mechanical organism, their work and non-work lives formed around the structures and language of their workplace. Imagining the psycho-sexual transformations in Ballard's Crash, where humans and cars are a single transformed object or a sex-death organism, with workplace structures and processes the mechanism replacing the car. What is our role in these invisible workplace mechanisms?

Even if you don't work in an office, these processes and structures are at work almost everywhere around us - cost-benefit analyses of traffic infrastructure, the execution of colossal public and private projects, processes and analytical tools increasingly becoming part of the education system and what is meaningfully left of the NHS.

How can mechanisms purely devoted to efficiency produce £100 disasters like the BBC's Digital Media Initiative for instance? (£100 million is the quoted figure - in fact if you take into account the endless financial 're-baselining' during the project the figure is much higher).

related - the language used within those methodologies (business speak) - stakeholders, actioning, drilling down, leveraging synergies - you know the sort. Is business speak - as Tom Ewing wrote in a recent article - 'hard done by'? With 'a compact, vigorous metaphoric sense .. that deserves better than contempt'? I'm torn - attacking it as language innovation feels a bit imaginatively barren, and its simplicity provides a useful leveller in the workplace, and the attacking of the language in itself feels unimaginative. It is also a sort of management guild cant - impenetrable to outsiders, with quite formal meanings to what look like anodyne phrases and words, designed to exclude. There can be a touch of superstition about the phrases - if I use this terminology then productivity will magically come about. To what extent is the language separable from the processes it stems from? Are the people who attack it actually correct, despite the usually facile execution, sensing something that is inherently wrong with this language, ie seeing that it is not a language that is able to critique its own system?

arguments around work as inherently virtuous, protestant work ethic or tool of the capitalist system, to be shirked, avoided, subverted, or performed in any way with the idea that your self-worth derives from how much value you can provide to your employers:

[url=http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tackle-lazy-britain-fellow-tories-tell-david-cameron-8056787.html]“Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world,” they said. “We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.”[url]

are people increasingly using the methodologies of their workplace in their non-work lives? I know a few people who seem unable to find repose because their prioritised and comprehensive to do list sees them trudging from chore to chore to tick things off their list. I barely go beyond a shopping list, but there is an increasing availability of personal applications which use workplace categorisation (priority, urgency, people involved, places, splitting it up into further actions etc) to apply to daily life.

[b]are office and work structures inherently designed to continue the historically powerful figure in these organisations - the wealthy, white, older male. to what extent do those structures force people to perform and behave in a manner that is commensurate with that figure in order to succeed?

er, that's enough for now.

quote is from Kingsley Amis's Memoirs, relating a Terry-Thomas anecdote:

[q]'There's a fellow called Telfer who makes more pork pies in than anybody else in the bloody world, old boy. So the Americans went and asked him how he did it - incentive schemes, graduated bonuses, productivity scales, vacation benefits, you know the kind of thing. "No," he kept saying, "no, I never do anything like that, no, I just let 'em turn the bloody things out as best they can. Oh, now I come to think of it, there is just one thing - every so often I goes down to the yard and I bawls, 'Faster, you fuckers!'"'

well that all seemed to format very nicely.

i think this is essential:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/

i've got an essay bookmarked at work about how ever-increasing demands on productivity help to create a society that discriminates more than ever against disabled people but i might have to wait until tomorrow or Tuesday to dig it up

and this is the most essential paragraph:

That Taylorism and its modern variants are often just a way of putting labor in its place need hardly be stated: from the Hungarians’ point of view, the pig iron experiment was an infuriatingly obtuse way of demanding more work for less pay. That management theory represents a covert assault on capital, however, is equally true. (The Soviet five-year planning process took its inspiration directly from one of Taylor’s more ardent followers, the engineer H. L. Gantt.) Much of management theory today is in fact the consecration of class interest—not of the capitalist class, nor of labor, but of a new social group: the management class.

That looks great, Mordy, thanks. Was going to put something about notions of management and workforce.

ha - should've known any ilx thread about work and productivity would be anti-work and anti-productivity.

That para is very:

http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/G/Antonio-Gramsci-9317929-1-402.jpg

xpost not anti them! even if I once said that I'd rather do nothing than go to work any more.

more, wondering how the formatting of labour affects the labourer, the product of that labour, and the process of labour.

are the work-efficiency systems neutral, or if not what are their politics? in some ways these systems, by anonymising humans into "resources" seem more open to a wider variety of people - to take a positive example. where efficiency is the aim, it doesn't matter who you are as long as you are able to resource the action. does this make these systems a force for good in traditionally gender-biased or culturally exclusive workplaces?

My office has recently gone from a broadly flexible arrangement when it came to working from home to compulsory attendance. All the tech brought in to facilitate remote working (cloud drives, Skype, etc) and the insane cost of landmark London office space counts for nothing when management doesn't trust people to put a shift in unmonitored. Tbh, they're probably right not to in a lot of cases. It's interesting how many people in relatively senior positions will do next to nothing unless there's someone looking over their shoulder. I'm not sure it's idleness, per se, rather than detachment. German workers may be more efficient because they have more of a stake in the business - both in terms of a formal voice on workers' councils and better rewards.

what do you mean by detachment, SV?

I ask because I tried to apply it to examples of senior management I have known and came up with the following:

habit of delegation means things get done by others, not them. Leads to uncertainty about what it is they actually do (both in themselves and those around or under them).

same habit leads to lack of knowledge about the specifics of what is being down, who it affects more than one level beneath them etc.

only "upward" looking - their role is to pass on senior level requirements. they don't feed back to that senior level meaningfully.

Yes, that's the gist of what I was thinking at the senior level. Also the lack of stability, certainly in my industry. Senior managers provide cover for the strategic failures of directors and can expect to be jettisoned if things go badly or jump before they do.

Along with the lack of productivity, there's often an unwillingness to make decisions or take personal accountability. Doing nothing can sometimes seem safer.

A senior manager at my office did a 'day in the life' blog for the intranet (lol), proudly explaining how he spent the whole day in meetings with people discussing - in the abstract - what would be getting done by some other people at some point. He really thought that this was evidence of how productive he is (and that anyone gave a shit).

They've also decided that doing things Agile is good because they've read a book about it, but have no idea how to actually do it.

Productivity is easy to measure when you are at the lower-end actually ~doing stuff~. Managers are at their worst when they realise that they also need to prove they are producing value. Being seen to be managing becaomes the most important part of their job.

Also related to this topic is the whole concept of the 'right to work' etc pursued by much of the left, especially the unions. I'm much more interested in reducing productivity/making work unnecessary.

negative people on the intranet

correlation between rising productivity and global temperatures has me wishing people would chill a little

Ive happily forgotten 99% of all the bullshit (and 99% of it was bullshit) a degree in business attempted to instill in me. These names, concepts, they're like the foggy ghosts of strangers. You'll do well managing people if you don't mind bullying them for money. Sometimes you won't have to do that- if this is the case your role is probably unnecessary and you might worry about any audit that could take place.

They've also decided that doing things Agile is good because they've read a book about it, but have no idea how to actually do it.

This has been my experience of every single "Agile" project I have ever worked on, including the one I am currently working on.

You'll do well managing people if you don't mind bullying them for money.

not true at all.

I've been properly rubbing up against this world – agile, stand-ups, continuous improvement, stakeholders, risk registers, QA, etc etc etc - & it is a fascinating language. I keep meaning to dig around for a load of ISO 9000 (quality management) and 31000 (risk management) pdfs.

I just look at the names of them. MoSCoW Method. PERT (which seems to emerge from weapons development. Do many of these have a semi-military/defence contractor background? It feels like where they should come from)

I am not against this stuff in principle. I mean if we have to get some shit done we might as well try to find an effective way to do it. The ease with which this culture slides into voodoo vocab & self-analysing meta-processes makes it seem like it's fooling itself. And the pretended universality of efficiency culture (anything can be managed more effectively using techniques x + y) is v suspicious, probably evil.

The fat in the system is a necessary component, p much all management/productivity tools dont want to acknowledge this.

They've also decided that doing things Agile is good because they've read a book about it, but have no idea how to actually do it.

This has been my experience of every single "Agile" project I have ever worked on, including the one I am currently working on.

― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo), Monday, July 1, 2013 10:19 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this a thing though where a system that is widely used by high-profile successful companies is also used by companies who don't want to put in the money and time to properly execute its mechanisms? ie a culture of efficiency systems meaning that those systems are used poorly in many places

wd definitely second LG's point about management. Good managers find ways to protect and promote their staff, if they can finding ways to develop their skills, as well as looking at how best to execute the requirements of the company. A good manager can't necessarily do that in a company that is run badly or which is viciously rapacious, but they can minimise the effect of that to a certain extent. Tho that never stopped me feeling complicit in the near criminal behaviour of the senior management (in one case).

The language! The language is amazing (and sometimes terrifying). Here's some of my favourites from PRINCE2

accept (risk response)
A risk response to a threat where a conscious and deliberate decision is taken to retain the threat, having discerned that it is more economical to do so than to attempt a risk response action. The threat should continue to be monitored to ensure that it remains tolerable. [this first a great example of 'normal' language having a formal meaning within the system - dangerous!]

agile methods
Principally, software development methods that apply the project approach of using short time-boxed iterations where products are incrementally developed. PRINCE2 is compatible with agile principles.

assumption
A statement that is taken as being true for the purposes of planning, but which could change later. An assumption is made where some facts are not yet known or decided, and is usually reserved for matters of such significance that, if they change or turn out not to be true, there will need to be considerable replanning. [one of main areas that answer my question about how models used purely for efficiency can go so badly wrong, I think]

assurance
All the systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that the target (system, process, organization, programme, project, outcome, benefit, capability, product output, deliverable) is appropriate. Appropriateness might be defined subjectively or objectively in different circumstances. The implication is that assurance will have a level of independence from that which is being assured. See also ‘Project Assurance’ and ‘quality assurance’. [lol v reassuring]

authority]
The right to allocate resources and make decisions (applies to project, stage and team levels).
authorization
The point at which an authority is granted.

baseline
Reference levels against which an entity is monitored and controlled. [see the re-baselining that goes on in a lot of projects - basically 'ok ok, let's ignore the bad shit that went before, we fucked up, let's start AGAIN, it'll be better this time]

benefits tolerance
The permissible deviation in the expected benefit that is allowed before the deviation needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Benefits tolerance is documented in the Business Case. See also ‘tolerance’. [can be p damned tolerant]

Business Case
The justification for an organizational activity (project), which typically contains costs, benefits, risks and timescales, and against which continuing viability is tested. [always wrong and expected to be wrong - usually just means 'get funding by hook or by crook']

Change Authority
A person or group to which the Project Board may delegate responsibility for the consideration of requests for change or off- specifications. The Change Authority may be given a change budget and can approve changes within that budget.
change budget
The money allocated to the Change Authority available to be spent on authorized requests for change.
change control
The procedure that ensures that all changes that may affect the project’s agreed objectives are identified, assessed and either approved, rejected or deferred.
[a whole world of pain, changing expectations and rising costs]

checkpoint
A team-level, time-driven review of progress. [time driven!]

contingency
Something that is held in reserve typically to handle time and cost variances, or risks. PRINCE2 does not advocate the use of contingency because estimating variances are managed by setting tolerances, and risks are managed through appropriate risk responses (including the fallback response that is contingent on the risk occurring). [lol]

cost tolerance
The permissible deviation in a plan’s cost that is allowed before the deviation needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Cost tolerance is documented in the respective plan. See also ‘tolerance’. [note sensation of infinite regression built into a lot of these systems - like the notion of continuous improvement for instance.

dis-benefit
An outcome that is perceived as negative by one or more stakeholders. It is an actual consequence of an activity whereas, by definition, a risk has some uncertainty about whether it will materialize. [lollo]

DSDM Atern
An agile project delivery framework developed and owned by the DSDM consortium. Atern uses a time-boxed and iterative approach to product development and is compatible with PRINCE2. [O_O]

embedding (PRINCE2)
What an organization needs to do to adopt PRINCE2 as its corporate project management method. See also, in contrast, ‘tailoring’, which defines what a project needs to do to apply the method to a specific project environment. [the project systems are self-preserving and have inbuilt defences against their dismantling]

exception
A situation where it can be forecast that there will be a deviation beyond the tolerance levels agreed between Project Manager and Project Board (or between Project Board and corporate or programme management). [see the world of projects that meet none of their benefit expectations and cost billions - possibly business process at its most dangerous: an innocuous word used to describe something that has an elastic quality allowing almost anything to happen, an excess to be ignored, because of the judgment deranged of the stakeholders]

governance (corporate)
The ongoing activity of maintaining a sound system of internal control by which the directors and officers of an organization ensure that effective management systems, including financial monitoring and control systems, have been put in place to protect assets, earning capacity and the reputation of the organization. [governance really important. i [i]think within this definition staff belong as 'assets.' I'm assured by a friend who sits on Quaker governance meetings that their governance is excellent, and they are often used as consultants by top organisations. began writing governance documents for my previous corp, included lots of radical stuff culled from ilx feminist and other threads. sadly got taken over before we could establish a millennial reign of radical perfection and absolute virtue, the nouvelle Heidelberg of the 21st C]

inherent risk
The exposure arising from a specific risk before any action has been taken to manage it. [sometimes i just try and apply these terms to The Thing or Day of the Dead]

wait... i've only reached 'i'... gotta eat and get ready for senior management meeting tomorrow.

italics an important part of business management tbf.

No CRITICAL PATH, no credibility!

Is this a thing though where a system that is widely used by high-profile successful companies is also used by companies who don't want to put in the money and time to properly execute its mechanisms? ie a culture of efficiency systems meaning that those systems are used poorly in many places

This is exactly it. Why is that Japanese car production line so efficient? I don't know, but let's take one aspect of how they control robot welders and apply it to human beings.

Can't remember why I thought it was a good idea to make my ilx login the same as my work one. Drunkposting to this thread could destroy me.

oh man, CRITICAL PATH, yeah. oppet, don't worry:

probability
This is the evaluated likelihood of a particular threat or opportunity actually happening, including a consideration of the frequency with which this may arise.

of course:

dis-benefit
An outcome that is perceived as negative by one or more stakeholders. It is an actual consequence of an activity whereas, by definition, a risk has some uncertainty about whether it will materialize.

Great SWOT analysis.

My favourite piece of terminology is either 'backlog grooming' or 'planning poker'.

lol the wiki photo of a daily scrum meeting

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Daily_sprint_meeting.jpg/640px-Daily_sprint_meeting.jpg

Everyone in that photo looks hungover. Or just devoid of a will to live.

it is the endgame of human potential that we overwork ourselves on meaningless projects

apparently, it's a vuca world

http://www.stratabridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/VUCA-Definition.jpg

such strange metaphysical structures!

but we have the answer

VUCA is another example of terminology lifted from the military, isn't it?

iirc you need to be antifragile to thrive in a VUCA environment.

i think within this definition staff belong as 'assets.'

putting a Dilbert strip in this thread or anywhere else on ILX is most likely an instant sirens-go-off game-over move but I couldn't let this go by without pasting this:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/6852/4ne.gif

wiki on vuca has one of the most impressively concentrated passages of ManLang that I've seen:

The capacity of individuals and organizations to deal with VUCA can be measured with a number of engagement themes:
Knowledge Management on Sense-Making
Planning and Readiness Considerations
Process Management and Resource Systems
Functional Responsiveness and Impact Models
Recovery Systems and Forward Practices
At some level, the capacity for VUCA management and leadership hinges on enterprise value systems, assumptions and natural goals. A "prepared and resolved" enterprise[2] is engaged with a strategic agenda that is aware of and empowered by VUCA forces.

I have a worse problem than oppet since this my actual full name, so I won't be on here much, but couldn't let this go past:

I've been properly rubbing up against this world – agile, stand-ups, continuous improvement, stakeholders, risk registers, QA, etc etc etc - & it is a fascinating language.

Dude, QA is not an arcane managerism, QA is how you make sure that the tires don't fall off when you turn the ignition key!

ha, fair enough; with QA it's the creep of it that was bothering me - I'm on a 6-month editorial job along with another editor; she uses QA as a verb where I'd use check, edit, copy or proof - 'And we need to QA each other's work', 'Should one of us QA that?'

i have andrew's problem. real name as login, day job in QA at a company which adopted agile about 2 years ago. for now, suffice to say i hate the living shit out of agile. any efficiency app which demands at least an hour a day of your time just so that you can RECORD THE IRL TASKS YOU DID needs to diaf.

processes become the end product.

it can feel like sometimes. and wrt QA - it's the (scope?) creep of engineering or software development structures and terminology into non-engineering/dev areas that feels culturally significant.

it's not entirely/all bad either. I'd like to into it more but I've just come out of a five hour management meeting and desperately desperately need a drink.

At this point I'm fairly sure Agile just means "we make shit up as we go along"

I am on a scrum team

how does that work for you?

employ yourself, once you have enough money for rent and food, stop working.
repeat.

I have to start working soon, like full-time. And I'm no closer to being qualified for the kinds of things I want to do, which at first I blame myself for--why didn't you start writing sooner? Why didn't you work harder at publicizing yourself to non-profits? Why didn't you volunteer more??? but jesus, it's been like rediscovering myself to just slow down for the last 4 months.

Unfortunately what I discovered is that I don't want to work more than like 20 hours a week unless the "work" is pretty fun and I can ride my bike there.

An Economic Calculation

For A., college is an endless series of competitions: to get into student clubs, some of which demand multiple rounds of interviews; to be selected for special research projects and the choicest internships; and, in the end, to land the most elite job offers.

As A. explained her schedule, “If I’m sober, I’m working.”

In such an overburdened college life, she said, it was rare for her and her friends to find a relationship worth investing time in, and many people avoided commitment because they assumed that someone better would always come along.

“We are very aware of cost-benefit issues and trading up and trading down, so no one wants to be too tied to someone that, you know, may not be the person they want to be with in a couple of months,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/fashion/sex-on-campus-she-can-play-that-game-too.html?pagewanted=all

"dis-benefit"

holy..

Thread needs a trigger warning now with that scrum meeting photo

disbenefits is v much a thing I'm afraid. can someone explain to me what a scrum meeting is please? I have a bucket handy.

"Knowledge Management on Sense-Making" is too good

Scrum is a software development methodology that revolves around "stories," "sprints, and daily "stand-ups."

ah, thanks. second one - sprint planning (often used in a daily meeting I have with some 3rd party developers, and at which I just silently mod my head).

Went to a chartered accountancy open evening

&?

the marketing director kept looking at me and adding on 'and we have .... options for.....older people too!'

he was like idk 12

i'll stick with the plan for a masters in IT

✓

At the last full-time job I had, a new CIO came in and forced the programming staff into adopting a agile dev. path with the daily scrum meeting. You can guess how well it went...

Six months after new CIO comes in, one-third of the programming staff leaves/laid-off - and then four months after that CIO is fired. Good job everyone!

It's actually gone really well for us, mostly because it forces the business to prioritize work as opposed to assuming all projects have equal priority and must be done yesterday.

Scrum is a software development methodology that revolves around "stories," "sprints, and daily "stand-ups."

We are doing this, or some variant on it, we don't call it Scrum, just Agile, which I gather Scrum is a type of. It's been a total nightmare so far. I think we're starting to turn it around a bit now no thanks to the product owner who is unfortunately also head of IT. So far "agile" has been an excuse to avoid actually planning how anything's going to work. I understand being flexible but I don't really know how to construct a system with no requirements whatsoever. We're also setting up a load of interface stuff without any front end design which seems bizarre to me. We don't even know what we're building it to do. Again "agile" is the reason why we're going to end up having to rewrite all of this in a month, repeat until project goes over deadline and gets canned (which is what happened to our last "agile" project).

I get the feeling that when this happens it's because of poor implementation of the theory rather than a problem with the theory itself.

there sounds like an awful lot of things you describe in there that shdnt be possible if following agile to the letter.

that said - as I think I wondered upthread, is ita metaflaw of these systems that they're more usually badly implemented than implemented well? the illusion of systemic security and a sort of cargo-cult attitude that these systems bring the rain, regardless of the people doing the voodoo. that the development/project management wd be better done in a less systemic way.

tho what do I mean by this? are notions of "more normal" ways of doing this just a reference to waterfall? are we always poorly executing the last system that was popular and assuming it is "common sense"? reading kipling with his descriptions of vast international civil service systems, with no thought to efficiency, just the recording of everything, a vast ledger of debits and credits - let's call it the Accountancy system - reminded me how important these systems of accomplishment are, with their notions of bounded perfectibility (recording perfectly will bring us total control/understanding) or "continuous improvement" (stasis is bad, it is possible to exist in a state of perpetual increases in efficiency (or quality I guess but usually means efficiency - these are systems of engineering efficiency) - an asymptotic nightmare of perpetually receding accomplishment.)

Pessoa too, with Soares sitting at his bookshop ledger, a reassuring symbol of the futile metaphysics of his life.

I was just considering Bradshaw - whose timetables of trains were proverbially inviolable, a law as fixed as the sun.

we now have a system of SLAs, of risk, of acceptable percentages of failure, derived from the important and reasonable engineering axiom that everything mechanical carries with it risk of failure, a notion transfered into non-mechanical environments into the notion that everything, any project, carries with it something called 'risk', and that therefore a certain amount of risk is to be expected and is therefore acceptable.

in fact these 'risks' are more usually risks to benefits, or aims often more nebulous than the ability of a machine to do a job consistently successfully.

the loss of certainty around what constitutes success and what constitutes failure probably results in the long-term failure of a lot of projects. or rather their ability to improve things less than expected for a greater than expected cost.

beyond a certain point it can appear that a project has had too much spent on it to fail - that the expense itself becomes a contributing reason to find efficiencies from within the project.

that's a point that appears imperceptibly and is continual - new madnesses of excess are always being reached because of the madnesses that have gone before. (again, I'm thinking of the BBC's Digital Media Initiative).

stakeholders become bound to an ixion's wheel where the aim is to sustain the project than deliver the expected aims within the expected cost.

and yet the system, and very often the people who are most integral to perpetuating the system and its failures survive, because it is not possible that the system is to blame, only the failure to carry it out. Stakeholders have a 'wash-up', where they talk about what would need to be improved next time (by which they mean the things that they will do again every time).

Just had a planning meeting for next sprint which is supposed to be the last one before a demo of skeleton site for the bosses. Idiot manager has finally come up with some requirements for what should be in the demo next week. The current implementation we have won't support half of them because I came up with the database design with only very vague "oh just make something up" info, so now we'll have to redesign the DB which means we'll have to fix a load of interface tasks we wrote before we had the design for what they were supposed to do, which means a load of tests will fail and probably our data migration process (another nightmare in itself) will need to be changed as well etc etc etc.

I didn't used to mind this guy being head of IT because while I had the impression he's a bumbling idiot he kind of just floated around the office not getting involved with anything, but now he's picked up this project, which is the most important project for the business for the whole year, and is doing his best to fuck it completely. I'd quit but the company is actually quite accommodating to my wife's health issues and I worry they'd get rid of her if I wasn't here, and since she was out of work for 18 months before I got her a job here that's not really an option. So I just have to get on with it. I sure do love feeling trapped.

sorry to hear that Colonel - it sounds fucked and v frustrating.

the amount of confusion people in charge of projects who cannot think clearly can wreak is staggering.

also then they get defensive and start lashing out at the people who were actually trying to do the tasks. in my experience anyway.

^^ yep. He's started complaining we haven't written enough documentation, in retaliation for us asking him where all the documentation is that he's supposed to be writing.

that said - as I think I wondered upthread, is ita metaflaw of these systems that they're more usually badly implemented than implemented well?

There's an assumption that the rest of your business until are just as optimized as your coding staff. Otherwise it's just one big Schlieffen Plan over the abyss...

Cool thread. My company has a massive online library with thousands of process/mgmt theory-type books with their own cult-like non-word words. It's amazing how many of these books cover the same generic processes under different names, and with minimum variation among the theories. And most just list a few case studies to "prove" their process works as stated.

xp - I enjoyed that Atlantic article linked above.

Quick note.

I think scrum meetigs are fine. More than fine, as it takes 10 mins to do - you only talk about what's blocking from doing what you were assigned to do, it gets to the problem quickly. You can get in a rut if the blocker isn't dealt with, but that's a problem with the wider project/programme.

Its an ideal meeting for people who hate meetings, but, like all ideals, rarely achieved.

I think scrum meetigs are fine. More than fine, as it takes 10 mins to do - you only talk about what's blocking from doing what you were assigned to do, it gets to the problem quickly. You can get in a rut if the blocker isn't dealt with, but that's a problem with the wider project/programme

LOL... the blockers were never dealt with, they were other departments of the company. Typical scrum meetings would take 45 minutes.

I've been in 30 min + scrum meetings but also ones where it was 10 mins without fail. Very lean. When it doesn't work its a gossip shop.

Our tester is not good at keeping to the basics

If there's no-one to push problems up to, who can mediate between you and other departments, that's not really the scrum meeting's fault though - and having a record of "Still no work done due to these fuckers" is handy.

Some updates:

Posting style needs CI trackers? Boards carrying too much inefficient resourcing? Insufficient Board Stakeholder accountability? Threads suffering blockers to completion?

http://www.ilxgroup.com/prince2-training.asp

Workshop
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Included in pack price
2 day workshop + exams

Also, just read this in Blanchot's essay on The Pure Novel, which reminded me strongly of a productivity/project management system and language description:

What is pure art? An art that will obey aesthetic necessity alone, an art that, rather than combine the representation of things with certain laws of sensibility, renounces imitation and even the conventions of meaning. The novel thus has serious pretensions to purity, since it claims to create, where necessary, a system that is absolute, comprehensive and indifferent to the ordinary circumstances of things, a system constituted by intrinsic relations and able to sustain itself without support from outside.

I'm not at work this week, took holiday, too skint to go abroad, just going DOWN and IN thru BOOKS, to tackle heartbreak and project management fatigue.

Also, NV, you mentioned an essay on how people with disabilities might be adversely affected by this sort of thing - is that still something potentially to hand? Wouldn't mind reading it.

Just had 5 hours of agile training.

Does it draw on d&d, RPGs, maybe fantasy in general for vocab? Was hearing a lot about artefacts and rituals (or ceremonies).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cdZBrZPzgCc/Twbh-zPlgCI/AAAAAAAACTc/O_2qCl7hN5k/s1600/dungeon_master.jpg

The ScrumMaster

haha, I'm a Certified ScrumMaster (TM, no doubt) and I've never used that shit for anything. Was a boring couple of days at work, certainly.

didn't really think there was much fantasy-ish about the vocabulary. Let's see what comes to mind. Scrum, increments, "burn down chart", sprints, backlogs, uhh product owner & team, grooming, cycles, retrospectives... nyeah, could be anything.

& xps to fizzles, I'd thought about starting a ilx stand-up/scrum thread. britishes office workers posting at 9:30am about yesterday's posts, their posting plans for today and blockers.

(Pint this week if you're around and about?)

true, all that stuff floated by me, I just started wondering where they got this from when we hit rituals and artefacts. I guess the sprint/scrum athletic vocab is nearer the front & the rest is just basic org-speak.

I think some call them "ceremonies" instead of "rituals"

Continuing my possibly terminal disregard of my agile tasks. A PM did one of mine for me today...

having a week off work and it's like recovering from a major trauma. just feel like I'm emerging from the illness/injury whatever and then it's straight back in. ugh. and I quite like my job!

surely many western countries are wealthy enough for people to work less - at least a day and an hour less per day for the remainder. put in place some sort of balance. increase employment. increase efficiency by reducing that Facebook (ilx!) time.

am I being hopelessly naive/thick? (I know there are reasons it would never happen, but economically speaking.)

I know exactly what yr feeling and thinking right now, the healthy sparkle has been obv from yr posts and ffs why must it be like this (I also quite like my job)

thanks Jon, that's what it feels like too! I've enjoyed participating more on ilx - simply haven't got the time at work, and the time out of it feels proportionately more precious - but also it feels more generally like I'm relaxing into myself again, remembering who I am, what I like doing etc.

couple of really good drinks with old friends has helped too, lights in the darkness, but as much as anything it's the hours, the luxurious hours, reading, pottering, tidying, internal time, woolgathering etc.

New year's resolution: hunt and kill whoever came up with "agile technology"

Had a mtg on thurs morning specifically dedicated to how I'm not keeping up w my Agile tasks...

Ugh. The new CIO who took over at my last job (and who eventually canned me) was an Aglie guy. Only bright spot was that he got canned a few months after me.

lol 'agile' that sounds like some bullshit

It would work but people have to make it work, and that is the problem..

I'm at the point now where I may deliberately start avoiding any jobs that have agile in the description. I'm sure it can work but I've worked on several agile projects at 2 different companies and it has been a nightmare every time.

I also love the whole "No True Scotsman" aspect to it whereby any criticism of agile is handwaved away by saying ah well if it didn't work then it wasn't truly agile.

lol

It is actually working reasonably well here, but I'm in the part of the organization that has some buy-in

I have been weaseling through the end of the year by creating tasks that are about a day worth of work and then picking them up one at a time.

I don't think i really understand what 'agile' means. It has been interpreted in my company as 'nobody has fixed roles but works on what they're told to as and when they're needed' which has come as a nasty surprise to some people who went through an acrimonious redundancy process and specifically refused to apply for some of the jobs they're now apparently lumbered with.

I now have to share my office with a tech team that has twenty-person scrum meetings in the middle of the corridor / in front of the kitchen door / in an impenetrable circle around my desk because actually booking a meeting room where they wouldn't be in everyone's way is passe. Bah!

we have assigned roles but, for instance, if we were way behind in testing and a test plan had been written, I could run some test cases

hallway scrum meetings are the worst, get a damn room

I'm at the point now where I may deliberately start avoiding any jobs that have agile in the description.

I always ask a potential employer if they're an agile shop up front. Then as you get into the details you can figure out if it's working for them or not (usually not)

Started working with a new client today who's super cool and trusts me enough to spec out and write what I see fit. The SysAdmin is into Zaooa and saw Hendrix. Probably at least three months of serious work at 24 hours a week. Great Cthulhu it's good to get some gas in the tank.

I have heard stories about your Sys Admin over this past weekend. Hope it's still going well! ;-)

So I'm being rather aggressively headhunted for a role in an "Agile Environment" - is Agile truly as bad and hated as everyone makes out? I guess I should read the whole thread and find out.

It seems to be very difficult for companies to implement Agile in not-terrible ways, as I have whinged about above.

I'm still at the same job now but I am definitely on my way out. I got asked into the meeting room with the 2 company directors on Friday where they told me I have to stop complaining about things because it's bad for morale. That is the last straw for me. The only reason I haven't already quit is there is a bonus for completing the current project by March 31st. Once we get to there and either I get the bonus or we don't get it, I am getting TFO of here. The 2 other people who sit on my row of desks are already working out their notice. I wonder if the IT manager is trying to spin it that they're leaving because I've lowered morale, rather than them leaving because he's made this place a nightmare to work. Not that it really matters. I checked out mentally a while ago.

I'm in an agile environment -- scrum based -- that is not too bad. In larger (read: corporate) environments it can be useful if everything does truly route the process and you have buy-in from the business group you support. It's nice in that you actually know what you're supposed to be doing and what your coworkers are theoretically doing, making surprises less likely.

yeah, agile works pretty well when done right in my opinion. Possibly not a huge benefit for projects where everything is going well, but when things go badly, it seems like the issues get identified and addressed much more quickly. Also specific short term goals are always much better than more vague long term goals.

told me I have to stop complaining about things because it's bad for morale

what the actual shit

likewise, a friend of mine put everything into trying to make the company she worked in the best it could be before accepting some years later that nothing would ever change. Since deciding to stop caring about doing/getting the best work (and mentally checking out) she's been congratulated on her increased professionalism. (I should mention she also worked at one of the most successful companies in the world in that field and was very highly regarded there for her insight)
it's not me btw, my workplace is p cool atm

So I'm being rather aggressively headhunted for a role in an "Agile Environment" - is Agile truly as bad and hated as everyone makes out?

Whenever I bring up the issues I have with Agile, the first reply I hear back is "well, they weren't implementing it right." I have yet to see this perfect implementation.

I always ask during interviews if they're an agile shop. If yes, I keep looking.

If the interviewer says "Agile, but...", run.

yeah, the qualifiers are really what kills it

"Agile, but..." is a killer yes. But that highlights the main issue w/projects - the vision, i.e. what are you trying to accomplish/what are you spending money on/what you want to achieve by the end...all of that needs to be much more concrete.

Agile -- and its failure -- exposes the lack of all those things much more quickly than waterfall.

Whenever I hear a manager say "Agile, but..." what it usually shakes down to is "We know we need to use a project management methodology to keep things under control, but we want to slide by doing as little of that methodology as possible". Which is normally not enough. I'm not a fan of Agile, and especially not some of the almost management fad like things that often go along with it, but projects not only need control, they need enough control, which is usually more control than the people in charge of the project think is necessary.

Although to be fair to Agile, I do like the way it emphasises 'controlling the project' rather than 'controlling the people who are doing the project'.

^^

One of the most galling things about this farce of a project I'm working on is the lack of control and vision has been blatantly obvious from the beginning but no bastard did anything about it apart from me and all I did was moan ineffectually and get myself into trouble.

ffs there is a large pack of people shouting user stories at each other and estimating points next to me. I am not in an agile mood.
AS AN office drone I WANT TO staple your mouths shut SO THAT I don't have to listen to your boring user stories
(8pts).

User stories are the new folk tales. You should be listening and transforming the mundane into ART :)

I just quit my job! Yay.

xp
yes! i like it when mundane or realistic details get introduced into a user needs session and it starts to tilt off course as you all argue about what the invented AS A wants to do.

&

Congratulations!

Yay quitting your job!

(I secretly love user stories, if we are talking about the same thing, unless Agile has made that a codeword and not a thing.)

lol woof

Please talk me out of quitting my new job over the timesheets. (This job is under a Federal contract and therefore requires a record of who did what and when, but my manager is asking for details of information regarding the Sharepoint repository. I haven't been trained on that yet.)

Is your job conditioned on knowing Sharepoint already? Did it come up as a job requirement during hiring and you lied about it? If not, why not frankly discuss your getting some training on it with your manager? Not enough info here.

The real source of my stress is culture shock: being an employee after years of being a temp/contractor. I was just trying to blow off steam after my immediate supervisor criticized my timesheet for last week on issues relating to Sharepoint. Never mind that last Friday afternoon she and I established that I hadn't yet been trained on Sharepoint.

The editing/technical writing portion of the job is fine. The administrative portion is driving me up the wall. My Federal clearance has been delayed for unknown reasons, and if something were to turn up on my record barring me from doing this job....

My Federal clearance has been delayed for unknown reasons, and if something were to turn up on my record barring me from doing this job....

knowing absolutely nothing about your situation, this sounds totally normal for feds and possibly even to be expected

The whole clearance system is probably in an uproar because of the Naval Yard shootings imbroglio.

True, but the other four people who started on the same day as me got their first level of clearance without any apparent hiccups.

You're just temporarily snagged on the "moral turpitude" clause. They found out you masturbated when you were 14 and are thinking over the implications.

don't trust a man who didn't masturbate when he was 14 iirc

My Federal clearance has been delayed for unknown reasons,

I couldn't even start my job until the security clearance came through, then I couldn't do half of it until the enhanced clearance came through, and there's still the other half of the work I still can't do because that stuff requires yet another level of security clearance, and there's a blanket policy in place that employees at my position don't get that level of clearance because of the cost.

This job is for a fairly low-risk position (as indicated by the last government email I saw on the topic). Supposedly there may be some holdup connected to past security checks on my behalf.

Or they may think that I'm a security risk because I live next to the Russian Embassy compound, and every Federal employee assumes someone else told me that was the issue. :/

Who coudl love a man who puts
sugar on his cereal?

Who could love a man who
looks at sexual movies?

Interesting in itself, but also because it identifies a point where there's a deliberate definition of practice and workplace culture, the values of which much later can be so embedded as to be thought of only as 'obvious' or 'common sense':

Japan brings kaizen philosophy to Ethiopia.

For Ethiopia's challenge is comparable to the task that faced Japan in the 1950s as it began to build a modern industrial economy in a largely rural society.

Evolving mainly in the countryside but soon taken up by industrial groups such as the car-maker Toyota, kaizen - which means "livelihood improvement" - came to encompass a range of development ideas.

And inculcation at an earlier stage:

Michael Rosen on business practice being built into the structures of education:

Bit by bit, we figured out that this method and this model wasn't based on any educational principles but was a direct transfer across to education of a business model of training and production. The child was to be 'produced' by the same systems that were being used to produce the labour-power ('skills') of a 'trained' labour force or indeed the same systems used to produce a mass produced car or biscuit: in a sequence of tiny, separate processes enacted on to the trainee or raw material. The fact that human beings (ie the children and school students) are not 'raw material' and that learning doesn't proceed in this tiny step by tiny step way, was irrelevant. It was, supposedly, Daily-Mail proof.

the consequence of making education a national competition where the distribution of the results is fixed, means that education delivers up a neatly parcelled up segregated workforce, top, middle and a very large bottom ie those who 'fail', don't make the grade.

Reading the various entertaining and interesting Agile anecdotes in this thread, they seem to grind away at a line, one side of which is where Agile is becoming a methodology that is part of the fabric of how many offices run (it's moved away from just software development into project work and some of it even to BAU), the other side of which is where Agile is a veneer on older-style processes (which are what?) being done badly. Does that feel right?

Also, was watching the cricket yesterday, a match held in Chittagong, which reminded me of this documentary, Manufactured Landscapes about the photography of Edward Burtynsky. The scenes filmed in the Chinese factories are v much FYF! material:

http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xeizh2

There are various models for the provision of these 'products', but in the jockeying for power in this new frontier for capitalism, one model is for the provider of the 'platform' (ie the server) to win monopoly control in a given area and off the back of this, to end up as the sole provider of the curriculum as delivered on to school students' tablets and PCs. This seems to be what google is doing in the US, where local councils accept google as the provider of superfast broadband, give them sole rights to provide internet access and the corporation comes in on the back of this with curriculum 'content' for school students' tablets and school interactive white boards.

This is interesting. Not sure that the end result will be monopoly in British schools but the idea of content and tech being provided together is already there and will only grow.

Rosen is right to identify corporate culture as being transposed to schools - partly because monitoring and micro-assessment are thought to be effective in aiding learner growth and partly because they provide a platform for corporations to make "evidence-backed" claims that their services being good vfm.

It's not enough to look to GCSE achievement year on year, the figures are broadly stable and increased performance is written off as being down to easier exams by many. You have to break each term down into units, each unit into standardised sub-units, each sub-unit into tasks and track performance against each, just as you would if you were looking at efficiency in a car plant.

We have software that breaks homework down question by question and allows teachers to track not just who is getting the answers right but how much time each student spent doing so. It can be used to compare performance across a class group, across a school, across a city and across a nation.

they seem to grind away at a line, one side of which is where Agile is becoming a methodology that is part of the fabric of how many offices run (it's moved away from just software development into project work and some of it even to BAU)

BAU, really? Are people being told to become 'agile' or some such? Because that isn't agile. That sounds like 'do it faster'.

I think that is when people adopt "well, we're agile EXCEPT" approaches

^exactly (at least that's what I had in mind). using agile methods or bits (scrum meetings) because they carry a magic power to get things done. but really, I suspect saying "agile will transform how many cultures perceive the mechanics of the world" is probably a bit much. saying that methodologies derived from engineering and specifically computer programming are increasingly characterising the world of work (and indeed the world around us and our personal worlds), seems more defensible.

the extent to which this is the case is certainly debatable (percentage & type of people actually in this type of work - tho see Rosen for the wider effect). but sometimes I feel the widespread consequences of it are as extensive as a the effects of Romanticism, say. the extreme level of current political centrism and the enforced dereliction of the working class in the uk can make it feel like the world of work provides the defining set of values for a large number of people.

I don't think people could ever be marshalled to do agile or even 'agile, except..' at work. I think bits of it could be a good thing -- who wouldn't want short meetings where the team get to review work packages in 15 mins and then get on with the rest of the day mucking about on ilx.

lunchtime masturbation will increase productivity

currently on a project where the pm insists on having TWO daily scrums (at 11:30 and 4:30, no less)

scrum = masturbation??

cockend next to me on the train is trading Legacy - 15 Lessons in Leadership. What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life.

wd love to read sthn good on the models that business devours. sportsthink is surely becoming yesterday's mode - feel that model was in itself inherited by sport from the army. boot camps and paintball. all that fuckin shit.

― Fizzles, Thursday, November 27, 2014 4:58 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reading not trading tho

― Fizzles, Thursday, November 27, 2014 4:58 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what's replacing jonny_wilkinson_kick_world_cup.jpg in the nu-management ppt deck? Breaking Bad?

maybe time for a 'faster you fuckers' revive.

― woof, Thursday, November 27, 2014 5:05 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There must be some top notch fascism in that.

[...book talk...]

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, November 27, 2014 5:16 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol breaking bad am half expecting to see this now.

half-baked theory: there's a sector divide here.

corporate management and finance: sports and army theory. agro-bro bollocks.

corporate tech: agile, scrum etc (feeding into tech and dev heavy areas). all-areas incompetence. feel this is main mode for non-director types. (guy next to me shouting out some recruitment firm saying u got me a deliverer when I needed a business winner trouble is he costs 15K more and tbh I have a prob with that).

start-up tech: still some open-plan, out of box, free your mind hippy philosophy?

need to hit up the fuf thread again yes. wut are u readin no place for this.

― Fizzles, Thursday, November 27, 2014 5:41 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

t/s: 9 Project Management Lessons From Game of Thrones vs Five customer experience management lessons learned from 'Breaking Bad'

"This... is not meth." KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

hooray saturday sitting in a library making up dog licence user needs

woof

do you have user journeys.

daily walkthrough guides

360 feedback sessions feel like tailchasing exercises tho

it's just content for imaginary ulsterfolk confused about dog licence costs

no journeys

ulsterfolk

Mis-read that as clusterfuck but then if you knew where I worked you'd be automatically making that substitution with all kinds of words all the time.

Born: October 27, 1963 (age 51), Belfast
Height: 1.60 m
Spouse: Gina Crossan
Licensed Sobriquet: Mad Dog

No need to bother w/this work suff anymore yes!

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-robots-algorithms-are-taking-over/

How much it (work) matters may not be quantifiable, but in an essay in The New York Times, Dean Baker, the codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that there was

a 50 to 100 percent increase in death rates for older male workers in the years immediately following a job loss, if they previously had been consistently employed.

One reason was suggested in a study by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), who found, Carr reports, that “people were happier, felt more fulfilled by what they were doing, while they were at work than during their leisure hours.”

We should test this reasoning here!

Been talking to a colleague - pretty much the only person who I've met in my line of work who loves scrum.

Got introduced to it in the military (lol I guess) but has used it in successful IT projects - gotta say the way he talks about it does make a lot of sense as a way to run specific areas of work.

our team of 5 or 6 is responsible for the customer facing bits. we scrum together despite working on 6 different projects. it doesn't make a lot of sense, really - we are effectively giving progress reports to the team lead (who oversees all 5 projects) whilst the other 80% look on bored.

You do scrum on one single project. So that sounds like its not being done the right way. #scrumPartyLine

i guess the alternative is 6 scrums of 2 people each.

to be fair, occasionally one of us will chip in with a solution to other people's problems. but that mostly happens in a skype window.

http://www.france24.com/en/20151014-france-32-hour-working-week-campaign-cgt-union

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/work-chinese-americans-jeremy-corbyn-highlands-holiday

nuh-uh in print compounded by the fact it's in a british paper is making me ia

“Jeremy has led the party off into the wilderness and then taken a hike in the Highlands,” lamented the reliably oppositional MP Simon Danczuk on hearing the news.

Cunt.

My workplace bought into this management consultant team who has brought in this whole spiel based on... Transactional Analysis.

I find the whole "bring in elements of therapeutic technique to the workplace" tedious at best and utter spurious wank on the whole.

I don't really know how to engage with this kind of discourse. In therapy settings, it's fine to say "I don't find this helpful, can we try another paradigm" but when it's enforced on you as part of your job... Ugh.

(In another part of my life, someone keeps trying to talk to me about "enneagrams" and seriously, I don't even know how to begin with that, except maybe to counter "well, you're a Sagittarius so you fall for every wank-word bingo going, but I'm an Aries so I tend to be slightly more sceptical about personality tests based on numerology and mysticism." Which would be extremely unhelpful.)

for most places this is a terrible idea, but my office genuinely does need therapy.

if somebody started talking to me about "enneagrams" i would make them listen to egg.

It's annoying because really, there are totally such a thing as dysfunctional workplaces. (Ironically, this is one of the least dysfunctional places I've ever worked.)

The problem is, that approaches that are suited for helping dysfunctional people do not always work for dysfunctional systems. Even though systems are made of people, totally well functioning people can create really dysfunctional systems, and dysfunctional people can create and use perfectly functioning systems.

excellent series of tweets here:

https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/740472383262298112

(1)Some 19th century work abuses that are back:

(2)"travelling time": then-19thC miners only got paid when they got to the coalface, not when they crawled to it through tunnels

(3)"travelling time": now SportsDirect staff didn't get paid while they waited in the warehouse queue for security checks

(6) in 19th Century many workers had to buy from over-priced "Company Store" (like in the song '16 Tons'). Was outlawed by the 'Truck Acts'

(7)SportsDirect staff had to use overpriced cash card and terminals from firm to get their wages - for a fee - a modern 'Company Store'

(9) "The Pen" "The Call On System".In 19th, early 20th Century jobless would gather in a 'Pen' for possible hiring (eg docks).

(10) Zero Hours contracts, with hire-by-day-by-text wait-by-the-phone are a modern "pen" for day- hiring at the gate.

(12)Specific older laws like the Truck Acts were repealed because nobody thought employers would be so bad again (!)

(13) "The Sweating System" or "Piecework" 19th Century home workers were paid by eg each shirt they stitched. Caused grim exploitation

(14) Modern 'piecework' like pay-per-parcel delivery jobs are often nominally 'self employed ', but "sweated" below minimum wage rates

(15)finally, a 'Middle Class' 19th century labour practice. 1880s teachers were "paid by results", with wages set by class exam results

(15) teacher 'payment by results ' creeps back, even tho' 19th century system abolished as it caused cheating, ignoring weaker pupils etc.

Good stuff.

Yeah very neat

Case closure rate up 50% this month tho guys

this all seems pretty nightmarish (though some ppl on twitter were questioning whether the badges could really do all the things claimed in the article and suggested that some of this might just be the Humanyze guy talking up his product?)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/bosses-track-you-night-and-day-with-wearable-gadgets-kdn8068ql

Employees of at least four British companies, including a major high street bank, are already carrying “sociometric badges”. The credit card-sized badges are worn around the neck and include a microphone for real-time voice analysis, a device that tracks the wearer around the workplace, a Bluetooth sensor to scan for proximity to others and an accelerometer to check physical activity.

Brauer said the next development would be “biometric CVs”, with job applicants required to present evidence from monitoring to show they are biometrically qualified.

“The basic premise we’re working from is the augmented human being,” he said. “That will be the optimal productivity unit in the workforce.”

🤖 optimal productivity unit 🤖
That's good fodder for https://www.reddit.com/r/latestagecapitalism

Sometimes completely separate passages in books you're reading obliquely illuminate each other. Over the last few weeks I've had Michael Powell's autobiography - wildly titled A Life in Movies - and Diane Coyle's history of GDP - equally capriciously titled GDP - on the go.

In GDP Diane Coyle writes that before the second world war GDP was a gauge of the national economic output, a set of statistics collated in part to analyse the great depression. what wasn't included in this was government spending on welfare and armaments, which did not appear as part of the productivity figures but as depletions.

The Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, established in 1941, found that its recommendation to increase government expenditure in the subsequent year was rejected on this basis.

...

The first American GNP (gross national product) statistics were published in 1942, distinguishing between the types of expenditure, including by government, and permitted economists to see the economy's potential for war production.

The economist Kuznets - who had argued that GNP should represent national economic welfare rather than just output - said that this method 'tautologically ensured that fiscal spending would increase measured economic growth regardless of whether it actually benefited individuals' economic welfare'.

Nevertheless as it was in governments' interests in the US and across Europe Kuznets lost. A complete statistic understanding of productivity was an outcome of the second world war - maybe it's best embodied by Keynes' How to Pay for the War.

He fulminated in this about the inadequacy of the statistics available to him for calculating what the UK economy could produce with the available resources, what would be required for mobilisation and conflict, what would be left over for people to consume - and how much their living standards might need to fall.

There's nothing wrong with this sort of analysis, but as Diane Coyle makes plain, the perception of GDP as the main useful method of measuring a nation's worth, dangerously loads policy against things that are not accounted for in it, and can ignore the fact that GDP is not welfare.

I thought all this very interesting. I've got a very tenuous narrative that's intended to lead up to the current FASTER YOU FUCKERS business methodologies, which includes the use of statistics in 19th century French medicine, and Benjamin's observation about the death of experience in the first world war, and how statistics was able to replace experience, with good and bad consequences. But one thing I've never been able to bridge is why we didn't really see the application of the statistical world to business - scientific management - until after the second. The great depression, the revolution in measuring productivity, and the second world war are a set of dots which help join the gap.

Michael Powell describes the film I Know Where I'm Going, made during the same few years as the changes to GDP, as in some way a farewell to a pre-war world. One which was less materialistic than the post-war one - he may not say materialistic, I can't find the quote, but the sentiment's similar. The representative of this world is Catriona, played by Pamela Brown.

There's a scene towards the end where the main character - Joan Webster - asks her 'If you're saddled with responsibilities that you can't get rid of, why don't you sell Erraig (her house) and Torquil could sell Kiloran? Then you could do what you like.'

Powell was renowned for not wasting film, so the fact Pamela Brown's answer 'Yes, but money isn't everything' took an unprecedented 22 takes for Michael Powell to be satisfied drew a huge crowd into the studio.

Of course, what was wrong was not the way the line was being read by Pamela: it was the line itself. When Wendy said: "You could sell Erraig and Torquil could sell Kiloran," Pamela should have answered: "Yes, but then we'd only have money." See?

When, many years later, I told Pamela this, she hit me.

Michael Powell was in love with Pamela Brown, and Emeric Pressburger felt it skewed the picture. Powell was forced to agree, both feeling that her performance was 'too romantic', so a load of footage of her ended up on the cutting room floor. This is completely f'ing heartbreaking, because i would watch I Know Where I'm Going over and over again just for Pamela Brown.

I had made it visually clear that Catriona had been in love with Torquil ever since their childhood together. This subplot had to go. No doubt people who loved the film, and who have seen it many times, will howl with anguish when they learn what they have missed (yes). But Emeric was firm and I have to admit that he was right. One glance from those great eyes of Pamela's early in the film told the whole story rather better than I could, with all my shots of her among the heather and the lochs. And yet, I wonder...? One still photograph survives from this whole sequence, and it was taken by me. It shows Pamela in the Castle of Moy, as she watches Torquil read the Curse upon the stone. It has an eerie power.

This counterfactual, this still that was never part of the film, like the counterfactual unspoken line 'yes, but then we'd only have money', seems to express a different, a similarly counterfactual world, or one that still exists, available but unavailable, outside of the grip of the productivity and statistical evaluations of worth.

(i'm aware this sort of romanticisation can be immensely bogus, but Pamela Brown ffs!)

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b4/09/79/b4097992436e1170cfa5914da5cdd8d3--film--beams.jpg

incidentally she suffered painfully from arthritis all her life, which led to a slightly odd gait, which Michael Powell first noticed at the theatre.

Specialists persuaded her to take the famous, or infamous, gold treatment for arthritis which consists of injecting gold into the veins. The treatment gives you a fighting chance if you are prepared to suffer tortures.

A grotesque version of the analogies above. More Pamela:

https://reelclub.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ikwig1.jpg

amazing staff meeting today at work as the head of our business gave a talk about some of the changes happening to a group of people, some of whom had recently seen colleagues lose their jobs in a round of off-shoring. tin-eared management speak to a large group of young, immediate post-university staff. started talking about how why automation and industrial change happened at them. one great woman stood up and asked him not to explain capitalism to them. he responded by saying it was nothing to do with capitalism, and that it was the way of the world, she said that it was capitalism, but that didn't matter and that she, among others, was just asking him to listen to people who were saying they were worried about their jobs. he went on to explain that 'history and industrial revolutions or evolutions' lol were based upon standardising and automating that which could be standardised and automated. another person responded by saying that their jobs hadn't been automated, they'd been off-shored, and off-shored badly (true and often seems to be true) and he responded by saying eventually all their jobs would be automated and this was inevitable.

he genuinely couldn't see outside his tiny technocratic, managerial head, i mean it was totally blank to him that capitalism could be seen as a thing. i think he felt he was being 'courageous' by being 'honest' and not showing any sympathy. it was all fascinating. and all very very bad obviously. woman got a round of applause tho. scenes.

lol when is his job being automated? I am pretty sure it could be successfully done (unlike many other jobs).

And all in this in the anniversary of the October revolution too.

the demand for thoughtful, capable managers greatly outstrips the supply.

day 1 of 2 done for prince2 practitioner and its such wordbollocksy sham

he went on to explain that 'history and industrial revolutions or evolutions' lol were based upon standardising and automating that which could be standardised and automated.

I can just see this man reading some MBA textbook or popular management book that offers this pearl of wisdom and him thinking, 'why, this explains quite a lot!' and then, because he has only room in his head for one explanation, it quickly morphed into 'this explains everything!'

this is excellent news: please report back from the front darragh (keeps autocorrecting to “farrago”).

i keep meaning to revive this thread, sort out the OP formatting, and pull together the various faster u fuckers stuff lying around in my bookmarks.

Is that the Irish version of PMP? Which is the biggest waste of time and money I (er my employer) ever spent. Fucking racket, these certs.

it

as far as i can glean

is something the british govt came up with then privatised

pmp calls for aiui hundreds of logged hours of proj mgmt, this calls for to to remember the interlinking jargonomics of several roles several themes several products and several processes, each of whom ought to have been ambushed on the road to st ives imo

i actually see a bit of value in the dept/service having one understood and defined method its just pointless when i know from experience that it will all be fotd upon first contact with the enem user

It also requires that you pass the most jackassed of all exams, which I say as someone who has taken all manner of jackassed exams in multiple fields.

My current place of work (where I consult, my actual employer fortunately is blessedly free of management consulting shenanigans) is implementing something they refer to as WoW which in their jargon is "way of working" and not what everyone else thinks when they see WoW.

It is like some unholy amalgamation of agile and POP and Tony Robbins, this thing. God only knows what the organization paid PWC or some other hacks for this thing.

i would find it hard not to say it christopher walken style like waaOOOuuw

I mean i find it hard not to say wow like that at the best of times but if you wave that second w in my face you best believe im giving it the two eyebrows

oh oh can we talk about consultancy firms

when im not studying for a regurgitation tomorrow lunchtime like

Oh I'm surrounded by 20 year old PWC babes in the vicinity of my workstation (and they are total babes, totally adorable and lovely) and afaikt they spend their days putting together ppt decks about managing shit when it is clear that they have only ever managed ppt. But it is cute and gross at the same time when they all gather in the VPs office, the VP with the Harvard MBA who has some sort of beardo jeans and puffy vest thing going on. The only shit in his office are a bunch of management books of the kind that make me want to die.

I should be clear the Harvard MBA beardo 40 something dude clearly loves his PWC babes, when they all come in to his office and show him their ppts.

iirc a good designer I worked with in the civil service got themselves put through Prince2 training because it gives you the magic words to put on a PowerPoint so that the Excel functionaries shut up and you can get on with making things.

someone left this lying around on a desk at work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)
I didn't realise there was a genre of management novels "written in a fast-paced thriller style".

I wish I was efficient and organized. Since age 13, becoming organized was always my #1 goal and I’ve never come close. Every day is a new adventure of scrambling to fix the stuff I put off the day before. But then somehow it hasn’t hindered my life too much? I don’t understand.

But yeah, the “PWC babes” sound like people I would be in awe of. Even if the powerpoints are nonsense and my way of working is ultimately more efficient, there is nothing I admire more than colleagues at work who have, like, this appearance of having all their stuff together/following through on a plan rather than improvising all day

I feel like i get cut more slack for deadline/efficiency issues than my colleagues because my role is “creative” and I don’t really think it’s fair. Don’t want to share too much about my workplace but, like—too much slack for me, i feel, is part of it

i have been project managed by accenture babes of all types and ive been keeping a shiv in my sock two years now in case any of em ever drop from on high at me again

someone left this lying around on a desk at work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)
I didn't realise there was a genre of management novels "written in a fast-paced thriller style".

― woof, Monday, 11 February 2019 23:38 (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my dear dad had some shit goin on in the late nineties and after reading the celestine prophecies he insisted that he could see the energy coming out of kindred souls' eyes for six months guys i know ye think im bad but listen im a fuckin success story given the background rly

i know i tell a story bytimes but i feel it necessary to confirm yes he actually believed this for six actual months, approached ppl in restaurants and shit when he sensed it had happened etc

Ooh i had a friend who used to work for one of those consulting firms. Man, she alwayss seemed so “with it” in college—the exact kinda person who makes me feel like i’m some starry eyed wanderer

It’s interesting to hear about your father’s foray into mysticism deems. Do you think this explains why—among ilxors—you’re on the rational/pragmatic side?

my father was a side-order to my mother treesh thats another thread.

the celestine prophecies is a mgmt/life success as novel is all, so it jogged the thought

Yeah—the mania for efficiency is definitely not disconnected from spiritual impulses—people tryin to reach a higher plane of existence and transcend ordinary human weakness

its a fuckin shortcut to understanding and/or doing the groundwork ime

my trial exam is hitting 15/28 if i had a text id be ok i think

Productivity and performance metrics can bite my fleshy flabby ass. The material my office handles comes in so irregularly that it's fucking frustrating to try to maintain a monthly hours report of 8-hour days, 5 days a week. I want to come up with a passive-aggressive way of saying this in a hypothetical exit interview.

got a two hour audit this morning and i am v underprepared. not sure where else to post this important information.

tho i will note it as a different expression of the old tension between governance and compliance and faster you fuckers productivity.

as silicon valley models of fail fast and constant iteration hit real world compliance - in medical and transport sectors to pick two obvious and salient ones - it’s not going to be pretty.

and probably worth differentiating between faster you fuckers productivity (er “operational efficiencies”) and automation (“operational transformation”). both potentially weaken compliance and quality control.

cant believe i never responded to quincies Deloitte obsvs above

yes!

we get in one of 5 firms to manage our huge projects and its all tv drama gorgeous tv drama behaving 22 year olds with swim lanes and jargon 2.0 and they are awful humans

ive been telling all of my managers we're using agile for the past three years fizzles, it keeps them happy and its as well they dont know what agile is enough to do more than ask because i sure fuckin dont know it enough to bluff if they did

excitingly this did not go... well. turns out our decisions points are not well recorded ('Yes we have that' 'Can show us?' 'How very dare you.'), and we may not be fully aligned with the rest of the company. Got another shot in two weeks' time god help me.

i fully endorse your last two posts tho darragh, they are correct in every particular.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/10/five-hour-workday-shorter-book

There's an article like this in the guardian every few months, my bosses are probably too busy to read them though.

bringing this thread into the covid age:

The co-creator of Scrum says hospitals aren't able to test as many people as a dedicated research and testing institution (that doesn't provide ICU care for any patients) because "[hospitals] are not doing Scrum". pic.twitter.com/T6GzlBL3Td

— John Feminella 🌠 (@jxxf) April 11, 2020

oh and btw absolutely *nailed* the audit second time around (by v rapidly implementing everything they said)

fantastic hour-long documentary on Chinese logistics and delivery firm JD.com, Cao Fei's 11.11.

follows parcel chain from central supply warehouse to deliveries to specific addresses, interviewing couriers and drivers along the way. Quite moving in places – nothing you won't see amongst any workers in highly commodified logistics chains in most societies, but that willingness to drive yourself into the ground for the sake of a family you barely or never see – 16 hour days seven days a week, within a vast, automating system, generates considerable amounts of pathos.

lol

me and quincie have the same discussion on deloitte types all the time

who knew

obv the post bumping thread v much not lol

i was thinking about these logistic chains the other day, yet another example of the true fair cost of a good/service just falling by the wayside

presentation in 3 hours, i should be doing soemthing more useful than watching bake-off repeats and quietly panicking

(although it's not a big deal, just 10 minutes to 20 people)

might go for a walk.

I find that in lockdown workplace emotions become exaggerated. So I become more anxious before even a fairly standard presentation or chairing a meeting, but also the relief afterwards is also much more intense than usual.

Thinking back a year ago when I could race from meeting to meeting and present without really worrying about it feels like a different age.

A short walk is probably a good idea to clear your head and change the environment.

went for a walk, but covid era walks in the park aren't exactly a walk in the park

missing in this thread: Daft Punk content

done.

turned out to be an hour earlier than i thought, which i found out 5 minutes beforehand...

also 64 people, not the 30 i was expecting. but that was just a number at the bottom of a zoom screen and not real people so...

Prob for the best you hadnt all day knowing it so

It can be disconcerting when questions starting pinging on the meeting chat during your talk and people raise their virtual hands to make points. I have found myself saying “I’ll take questions at the end thank you” - otherwise I’d completely lose the thread of what I’m saying.

yeah, an hour's less worrying, less pointless tweaking of script. the small bits i knew were weak i busked.

we had two rehearsals, and the actual thing was a lot smoother. still, cruel and unusual to make us developers do this. we choose the career with machines rather than people for a reason...

we had a "meet the trainees lunch" last week and it was so strange, just 25 people in a meeting introducing themselves and telling jokes, but since everyone was muted and half had the cameras off you couldn't tell if anyone was laughing, the person speaking would just smile and look nervous and say "so...anyway". such a weird an unnatural environment for this sort of thing

in the section after mine we did have someone unmute themselves accidently whilst doing what sounded like voice exercises over dodgy wifi connection.

As someone at the beginning of my history as a medical editor and proofreader, I will honestly say that I fucking HATE Asana and want it to die— the co I'm freelancing for at the moment uses it, and it's just so cramped and fussy, no matter how I change my settings. The last co, which was much larger, used Ziflow, which is just a fuck of a lot easier to utilize and track changes in.

hahahahahah Asana!!!!!! sorry ... Asana was the platform my colleague chose a few years ago to improve info sharing and delegation of tasks and .... he never used it, and they auto-renewed our annual subscription twice before I finally got him to give me the account credentials so I could cancel it.