[teampractices] [Engineering] Feedback requested on proposal for creation of Agile Specialist Group

[Arthur Richards]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> So, I'm not an Engineer, I just work here, but my first thought is: you
> want to *start* with 3 staff, and scale it up to 5 within the same budget
> year, for this?
>
> The justification is a pretty good justification for having *some*resources; teams are finding your knowledge and mentorship useful, you
> don't have the time to provide as much knowledge and mentorship as people
> need. But do you and Tomasz really have five staffers' worth of work you're
> currently having to turn down? Because that's what your ask necessitates.
> I'd be more comfortable with the idea of hiring a single person and, if
> they report 'gosh, I'm terribly overworked', hiring a second or even a
> third at the start of the next budget cycle, but I can't see any
> explanation in your proposal of why five are necessary: the only example of
> training you guys have provided that you explicitly call out is a session
> last August.
>
> If mentorship on scrumming is necessary, mentorship on scrumming is
> necessary. But we need to be very careful about how we spend money. What
> you're asking for is an entire Features team worth of money to train the
> engineers we currently have - on an opt-in basis. That sort of ask requires
> an active demonstration that this workload exists, and I'm not seeing it in
> your argument. I'd like an explanation of where you guys have five
> scrum-masters worth of work, and why it wouldn't be just as effective, and
> far more efficient, to take our existing engineers and spend a relative
> pittance getting the Scrummaster Certification and external training for
> *them*that you say the ASG will need anyway.
>

I think the interest already expressed on this thread from Katie, Steven,
and Dan justifies the budgeted resourcing.

Note too that the proposal has the ASG ramping up resourcing iteratively,
starting out with the group's head and two full time positions. Think of
this as the group's alpha phase, starting to tease out what works and what
doesn't, determining early on whether or not the propose approach is sound.
Assuming that the demand (and projected demand) is there, and that the
group and engineering as a whole felt the approach taken by the ASG to be
successful, the group would grow after two quarters.

-- 
Arthur Richards
Software Engineer, Mobile
[[User:Awjrichards]]
IRC: awjr
+1-415-839-6885 x6687
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/teampractices/attachments/20140303/60ebd229/attachment.html>