In a team meeting I had a while back my lead was talking about making sure we don’t get burnout. I asked if our department could trial run a 4 day work week. Their answer was “company won’t allow that but if you get all your work done by Friday I won’t ask questions if you’re not online”. Productivity and morale immediately went up. Good leads shield their team from the bullshit thank you
As a software deceloper I struggle to understand that phrase “if you get all work done”. That will never be the case for me, because (1) there is always more work and (2) we usually plan in more into a sprint than one can muster. That means we are always moving work from one into the next sprint. You are never done early enough to quit even a quarter of a day early.
we usually plan in more into a sprint than one can muster.
That means you have a project manager who doesn’t understand how sprints are supposed to work, and he’s hurting the entire team because of it. You guys will get burnt out, productivity will be shit, and the good people will leave. I’d encourage you to talk to them, or their boss if they don’t listen.
You should be able to tell by the first Friday if you’re on-track to finish your sprint without working Fridays. You can’t tell now because you’re overloaded.
I’m really not overloaded, I have a very agile team and we usually don’t take more than we can manage.
But saying you can always, with 100% certainty predict what blockers may arise in the whole next week is a kind of clairvoyance I’m not sure is possible. If it was, we wouldn’t need daily standups in that second week.
And, once again, Kanban is a thing.
Please, let’s just not use “all work being done” as a metric for time off.
My current mid-manager has the same attitude that gets them our respect back, but as long as it’s not codified, it’s one single useful piece of corruption that’d be taken away if that gets noticed or they’d get replaced. Better to have legit short hours than cuts entirely dependent on someone’s will, but we are frustratingly happy eating what occasionly falls from the table. It causes a lot of mixed feelings to say the least.
In a team meeting I had a while back my lead was talking about making sure we don’t get burnout. I asked if our department could trial run a 4 day work week. Their answer was “company won’t allow that but if you get all your work done by Friday I won’t ask questions if you’re not online”. Productivity and morale immediately went up. Good leads shield their team from the bullshit thank you
As a software deceloper I struggle to understand that phrase “if you get all work done”. That will never be the case for me, because (1) there is always more work and (2) we usually plan in more into a sprint than one can muster. That means we are always moving work from one into the next sprint. You are never done early enough to quit even a quarter of a day early.
That means you have a project manager who doesn’t understand how sprints are supposed to work, and he’s hurting the entire team because of it. You guys will get burnt out, productivity will be shit, and the good people will leave. I’d encourage you to talk to them, or their boss if they don’t listen.
I mean, that’s true, but the point still stands - every first Friday of a sprint there is ALWAYS going to be work to be done.
And what if they’re doing Kanban?
The point is, Fridays off shouldn’t ever be dependent on “all work being done”.
You should be able to tell by the first Friday if you’re on-track to finish your sprint without working Fridays. You can’t tell now because you’re overloaded.
I’m really not overloaded, I have a very agile team and we usually don’t take more than we can manage.
But saying you can always, with 100% certainty predict what blockers may arise in the whole next week is a kind of clairvoyance I’m not sure is possible. If it was, we wouldn’t need daily standups in that second week.
And, once again, Kanban is a thing.
Please, let’s just not use “all work being done” as a metric for time off.
My current mid-manager has the same attitude that gets them our respect back, but as long as it’s not codified, it’s one single useful piece of corruption that’d be taken away if that gets noticed or they’d get replaced. Better to have legit short hours than cuts entirely dependent on someone’s will, but we are frustratingly happy eating what occasionly falls from the table. It causes a lot of mixed feelings to say the least.