For Public Sector gigs do the following:
Look busy; fix nothing. Invoice.
qh
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Reply to: Too Many Cooks?
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Previously on "Too Many Cooks?"
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Originally posted by Kraut View PostSounds like bad management, not necessarily anything to do with Agile.
I have come across such projects too. You want to make a difference, but then realise you can't actually, because the whole department just seems to keep itself busy doing something without any focus or clear goals. I got considerably annoyed by that too initially. But nowadays, if that happens, I just think: "their mess doesn't have any impact on my daily rate; if that's how they work, that's their problem, not mine. Kerching!"
There are far more organisations like this one (i.e. highly dysfunctional) than there are who know what they're doing.
Gigs in such places will be offensive to your professional sensibilities, unless you're being brought in specifically to address this kind of dysfunctionalism.
You said you're contracted as a developer, so in that case it's important to keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, keep calm and carry on invoicing.
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With the exception of building Web pages, I've never seen agile do anything other than screw things up to the point that I won't even pay for agile gigs.
That doesn't mean agile is the problem with your gig but I very much doubt t it's helping.
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It's not directly with the PS but for one of the big consultancies.
I'm also literally the only English dev on the team. Rest of them are a nice bunch of guys but ask a question of any one of them & you'll get a different answer.
I think the strategy is just to suck it up like a ninja as the day rate ain't bad & see how long I can last.
As an aside, I've had a succession of short term roles recently & I felt this was negatively impacting my cv. I really wanted this one to go the distance.
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Never worked directly with PS, but have done contract consultancy gigs for Network Rail and London Underground back in the day.
My experiences pretty much align with NLUKs, there was an awful lot of contractor dead wood there too.
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Originally posted by Phil Rouge View Post[...] I've just wasted my time and effort or I have to take time out to make fixes to get stuff working because the goalposts have shifted so much since I started working on it.
I have come across such projects too. You want to make a difference, but then realise you can't actually, because the whole department just seems to keep itself busy doing something without any focus or clear goals. I got considerably annoyed by that too initially. But nowadays, if that happens, I just think: "their mess doesn't have any impact on my daily rate; if that's how they work, that's their problem, not mine. Kerching!"
Keep an eye on the market and move on as soon as something nice comes up. Until then, count your money and slow down a little while you keep looking like a pro (to get recommendations later). The good thing about large companies (and apparently public sector) like the one you are experiencing, is, they obviously don't know what their people are doing whole day; your gig should be reasonably safe.
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It's just a bad gig as part of the contracting lifestyle. You can have anything from the perfect gig to one where you've been brought in as a scapegoat and are there for no reason but to take the blame. Very unpleasant.
Very unlikely you are going to make a difference, particularly if its Public Sector.
You could try, carefully, pointing out some fixes but they don't like trouble makers in the PS. If that doesn't work you've got two options really. Stick it out and invoice or move on.
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Too Many Cooks?
I'm just wondering if anyone else has been in this situation and how you deal with it.
I've recently started a contract with one of the big players supplying software services to the public sector.
Ostensibly, I was brought on board as part of a drive to throw in more development resources to meet a tight deadline.
The reality of the situation seems to be that dev teams are too big and the workloads assigned in each sprint more suitable for teams half the size I'm working in.
The net result of this is that development tasks are small and tend to overlap resulting in one person's work being impacted by something somebody else is doing at the same time. In fact, this has been a constant theme in the 4 weeks I've been here and consequently it's impossible to gain any traction as I keep finding that either somebody else's work supercedes mine meaning I've just wasted my time and effort or I have to take time out to make fixes to get stuff working because the goalposts have shifted so much since I started working on it.
Everything's in a complete state of flux in other words. Is this what Agile is all about? I feel like I'm being pulled from pillar to post all day long.
Anyway, I'm not going to be a turkey voting for Christmas but I need to make this work because every day here is like having your teeth pulled.Tags: None
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