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Vlada
02-27-2011, 12:00 AM
All Staff Meeting Notes
Feb 26, 2011

The SWGEmu Staff


All Staff Meeting Notes - Feb 26, 2011

Please find the link below for the IRC discussion log for the All Staff Meeting on Feb 26, 2011. The topics covered were development adopting Scrum, Staff evaluation system and refocus on development by splitting Community and Development into divisions. Development Division is proposed to be Devs, QA and CTT with all the other Team members being in the Community Division.

Final decisions have not been made on these topics as this was just the discussion step with All Staff. This thread is being left open for as long as constructive feedback is given, so please don’t make extra threads on the meeting topics in other forums.

NOTE: Liberator will NOT be wiped until the current code from TC: Nova is deemed ready by Developers.

http://tinyurl.com/6b7xupl

We will be posting more updates once definite decisions have been made.


~ The SWGEmu Team

Mahonra
02-27-2011, 12:19 AM
I think its a good organizational move to restructure the staff into Community and Development divisions.

Rodd
02-27-2011, 12:52 AM
I work in finance, and I must say, that scrum presentation was more informative than many of the presentations I see at work, and I see many every day!

Zalaxy
02-27-2011, 12:53 AM
Cheer's for sharing the meeting dialogue.

Dialgo
02-27-2011, 11:36 AM
Thanks for sharing, great to see willingness to work together! Hope it works out! =)

cebt
02-27-2011, 05:32 PM
sounds like a good plan.. also Scrum will help speed up the development and keep the quality high..

Yhor
02-27-2011, 05:57 PM
The development side of it looks great, Xavia is a great choice for manager, from everything I've seen/heard. It looks like you all have a decent plan if it's followed through.

The community side isn't as clear, but I'm sure things will get ironed out as needed. I'm sure I'm not the only one though, with concerns about your first choice in lead for community team. Recent events have brought about many questions, and faith in this area is lacking, for me anyway.

Good luck, hope it works out to the benefit of a speedy, and accurate, 1.0.

cRush
02-28-2011, 01:34 PM
How about the community gets to vote on who they want to run the community side (out of a possible pool of existing staff of course). It's funny how the person who has consistently been behind team drama is STILL in a position of power. (Now he gets to run the show the way HE wants)

I fail to see how this remedies any issues.

Zop
02-28-2011, 02:58 PM
I want Dame to run it, shes my girl.

anthony98
02-28-2011, 03:13 PM
im sure we as a community really really and i mean really need all this. furthermore i wouldnt be suprised if in another 6 months or so we will have a new spiffy staff position(s) re-evaluating the re-evaluaters

Shotter
02-28-2011, 06:00 PM
While some of the basic specifics of that meeting demonstrate an understanding of how to move the project forward, it overwhelmingly shouted to me that the mindset of the team is still in the wrong place.

To highlight the beneficial parts of that meeting, the basic idea of the split between Developers and Community Staff, the 'Sprint' idea as well as a sort of 'Feature Lock' (IE we don't plan features half a year in advance) are all good basics, but that's just it, they're simple (basic) yet effective ideas.

The problem this Staff Team has had, and seems to continue to have, is the mindset that the only way to make this project work is to run it like a big company, which is fundamentally incorrect. Over the past year(s) there have been several staff restructures that ultimately proved to do absolutely nothing (Arguably they did more harm than good). In a vain attempt to mimic the professionalism and realism of a business, the team created a 'Board' and Kyle was elected 'President' and there were many titles that made someone or something seem vastly more important or powerful than they truly were. In short, they spent more time appearing professional than being professional. Which is again why this meeting has given me more cause for concern than hope or joy.

The problem is, the Team (Or someone very influential on the team) seems to fear their own project and their own community. There is some falsified belief that it is absolutely compulsory to success for them to become a business, when in fact little could be farther from the truth. At the start of the meeting Oru remarked that this project was different from any other, and in some aspects it is, but fundamentally this emulation project is no different from a mod for any PC game. The downfall here seems to be that he (Or someone else, or all of them) believe its completely different. Because of their irrational fear, they look to business practices to "save" the project, and while as mentioned above some of those practices are good, they're also simple ones that almost every mod project I've ever seen has utilized quickly.

Kyle stated that it would most likely be April before this entire new scheme was implemented (Although he hopes sooner), and all that seems to be to me is a month of wasted time for gain that could have been made without the waste. If they stopped thinking everything was so difficult and took so long to accomplish, it wouldn't be so difficult or take so long to accomplish, because the only ones holding them back are themselves. Arguably, you could probably ask most people in this community (Even if they are trolls, exploiters and drama queens bored at work) to think of a way the entire Staff should be run, and they'd probably be able to tell you a way to run it that would require a day to change and be better than what we've had for the past few years because it isn't actually that hard to fix. Again, the shadow the Staff Team sees is a monster only because they make it out to be a monster. They take out a rocket launcher to kill it, but end up blowing a hole in their house when they could have just walked around the corner and seen that it was their cat, Mittens.

Here's something you could have done easily without the need to look in to Scrum, and without having to restructure the staff as many times as it has been over the past two years, this will include some of the things you've already said you want to do from the meeting.

- Split the developers from the community staff, Developers make the game, Community Staff dictate how they interact with the community

- Have an internal poll to see who should become the Community Lead, Renala or Firehawk (Based off the organization chart that was posted during the meeting), and have an external poll for the community members to decide who they'd want. The external poll serves not as the end-all-be-all, but just as more data.

- Give the EC, GM, and Support leads complete autonomous power.

- If any issue arises between members of different sections, then they get together with one neutral party and talk it out.

- Developers set a goal they want to hit, IE: Something they want to have implemented in 2-4 weeks, then do it. At the end of the 'Sprint', they say if its done or if it isn't.

Those 5 steps could have been done (Excluding however long you wanted the polls to be up) in a day and could have solved an excruciating amount of problems. Other than that, streamlining the Eclipse/Jira process to enable newer developers to jump in is great, but again it didn't need this entire 'presentation' to make it happen.

The Team doesn't need a business, they just need to think. Personally I've been removed from the team without actually being able to face my accusers or even talk with them, in what world and in what mind did that ever seem like the right thing to do? Individually when I've spoken with members of the staff team they've been intelligent and critical, but for some reason when they all get together, they tend not to make the best of decisions.

All in all, this time this restructure might actually do something, and I'll be tremendously glad if it does get the Team back on its feet, but the fact still remains the mindset is still troubling. To end with an analogy, It's kind of like their new idea is an airplane, and they want to take their airplane to get to where they're going, and the airplane is nice, it has Plasma TV's and a mini-bar, but their destination is only a few feet away, and if they would have realized that sooner, many things could have been avoided.

A devils advocate a day keeps the rioters away.

Tylerdurden
02-28-2011, 08:27 PM
But surely all organisations need structure and a chain of command - without this there would be chaos.

Shotter
02-28-2011, 09:20 PM
Indeed they do, such structure and chain of command isn't as hard to create though as the Team seems to believe.

cRush
02-28-2011, 09:27 PM
But surely all organisations need structure and a chain of command - without this there would be chaos.

No one has suggested that they do away with structure and chain of command.

All that is being suggested is they stop trying to over complicate what should be a fairly simple design.

Developer Director
Developer team

Community Director
Community team

There is no reason for the fancy titles, locking people into specific roles only, etc.



To whoever thought it was cute to leave me negative reputation and this: "Name a single company that allows their community to decide who is in what position."

Mind you that this project is a community project, not a company. When that is realized, this project will flourish again. Also, the majority share holders of many companies make decisions on who is in what position. Here, that majority is the community.

AceWasabi
02-28-2011, 10:09 PM
Hard to fathom that the project leaders here still think TAF is the best candidate to lead the community after the community has spoken loudly and at length about how they neither trust or respect him. Makes even the casual observer wonder if said leadership is at all in touch with reality.

nee2earth
03-01-2011, 06:29 AM
Mind you that this project is a community project, not a company. When that is realized and reinforced consistently, this project will flourish again.

QFE because it deserves it (as well as slightly modified for further effect) .

Zalaxy
03-01-2011, 09:24 PM
Sorry if this has been explained before, and if it has then maybe this can be an updated answer. I was curious what exactly each role on the team is supposed to be performing. It's hard to gather who does what. I realize this is a small team and project; therefore, roles are supposed to be fluid and flexible. Some explanation of what to expect would be helpful so the community isn't so confused. I'm hoping this won't turn into a flamefest.

I'm going to take the most recent source of the emu team structure I could find which comes from the Staff Meeting Notes thread. The structure in question is the current/proposed design:
http://i.imgur.com/2UYz4l.png (http://imgur.com/2UYz4)

How I'm going to do this, anything highlighted in red could use some clarification.

Founders:
Are they the overseer's? Do they get a say in every decision(events, community, development, etc.). If the entire team are against the founder's are the founders over ridden?
Community Director:
Why are there two directors? Why do they oversee area's of conflict(support vs. community relations). What happens if these two have a disagreement? Does it get pushed to a single founder, all active founders, or all founders?
Support Leader:
What does this entail? Support in most game's includes broad area's such as CSR, Moderating, Community Relations(more on that later), and technical assistance(site support)
CSR Leader:
This seem's at conflict with support. If support says no on a situation but CSR says yes who over rides who?
EC Leader:
CR Leader:
What exactly is this job? More moderating is done in this position then all the other positions combined. Are they supposed to have the voice of the community? Are they supposed to be the voice for the team? Do their decisions conflict with support?
Moderator Leader:
Site Services Leader:
I don't get what this position is for? Site development? Site support? If the latter it should fall under support/


I'm avoiding most of the development side except a few roles.

Development Director:
Does this position oversee all development decisions? Is this person allowed over riding decisions against a developer decision?
Developer Leader:
What does this mean? So can a founder say focus on vehicles and a development director say work on cities, but the developer leader and the developers want to work on creatures. Who's decision over ride's all? Is this going to be the voice of the entire developer team?
Scrum Manager:
Since scrum is going to pretty much run the entire development process soon who is overseeing who in this position? Shouldn't scrum and development director be one and the same?


Just some other things that make no sense as well. As it stands the current proposed structure has

18 Leaders/Supervisors/Directors
and only
17 supporting members working below the above

The above information was pulled from the chart and excluded founders altogether. If they were put in under leaders there would be 24 leaders and 17 members.

Opinion:This seem's like too many chief's and not enough workers. A lot of the unnecessary fat comes from the community side. Support, CSR, Community Relations, Moderation, and Site Services seem to overlap each other on area's of responsibility. CSR and site services should fall under the support section. Community Relations and Moderation should be one and the same.


Any clarification would be a welcome basket of awesomeness.

Lobreeze
03-01-2011, 09:39 PM
Didn't you get the memo? SWGEmu is now emulating a Bureaucracy with imaginary workers. SWG is so last decade.

TAfirehawk
03-02-2011, 02:26 AM
Zalaxy,

Those are very good questions and I am sure other people are wondering the same thing. There is more info that goes along with this that explains the purpose and reasoning behind the SPLIT and RESTRUCTURE but it is all still being sorted out.

That chart is representing the SPLIT between the Devs and Non-Devs to provide a "cleaner" environment for development, but does not show the individual department level setup yet.

I won't address each of your questions right now because that is certainly not our final structure in full detail. Numerous combining discussions have already taken place, often saying the same thing you have.

The basic plan we are trying to lay out is the Founders, who are the OWNERS that never change, will oversee the major decisions and disputes but not be involved in day to day management. The Director level handles the coordination of the departments and communication/personnel issues so "the left hand knows what the right hand is doing" along with doing tasks at the department level whenever possible to help get things done. The real day to day work comes from the departments and Leaders, who are simply workers that try to keep organization and coordination in tasks needing to be done. We all need primary responsibilities but we also have secondary jobs too. For example, if an announcement needs made in the next 24 hours, then we need to know who to go to so that is accomplished properly. But that doesn't mean the Communications Member does nothing but that, quite the contrary as they are asked to help in other areas they have skills in, like support or moderating.

That is a relatively short summary and more details/changes are upcoming.

Yhor
03-02-2011, 03:23 AM
What has me curious, after looking at the structure in chart form, is how does a project such as the Emu get so damned bloated?

My question, after reading the latest in this thread, would be why not simplify it?

You have, in order..
1) Founders.
2) A developer lead. Possibly a qualified backup for absences.
3) A communications lead. Possibly a qualified backup for absences.
4) Everybody else, in their respective departments.

That's 2 people calling the shots for their respective departments, with oversight from the founders. Is that a concept that's just too simple to grasp? Sometimes, less truly is more.

TAfirehawk
03-02-2011, 04:32 AM
Yhor, that is nothing that hasn't been done already....as others have suggested endlessly around here....

It is like beating a dead horse to say "try just one Community Director" as that has never worked because that person being out of touch for 1+ days creates chaos. Often the public doesn't see the chaos but sometimes when public decisions get made and then reversed quickly, well that is internal chaos spilling over into bad public decisions because person A wasn't around to see it and stop the madness from becoming public.

Life is not simple and the aspirations of this Team are not simple. But yes we have been trying to simplify for far too long and now we have some velocity behind the simplification. We will not end up with as many departments as you currently see on the org chart, at least not if I have anything to say about it....even though a handful of vocal folks here think I am Diablo incarnate for this project....

Yhor
03-02-2011, 05:00 AM
Yhor, that is nothing that hasn't been done already....as others have suggested endlessly around here....

It is like beating a dead horse to say "try just one Community Director" as that has never worked because that person being out of touch for 1+ days creates chaos. Often the public doesn't see the chaos but sometimes when public decisions get made and then reversed quickly, well that is internal chaos spilling over into bad public decisions because person A wasn't around to see it and stop the madness from becoming public.
I'm curious to know when this was done before. I've been here since 2006-07, off and on, and I can't remember the structure ever having been simplified to 5 or less 'leaders', + the founders.

And to the point of 'public decisions'... maybe you need someone who is able to think things through, before putting them out as a final decision/policy format. I've emailed a few suggestions on how some of this could be handled, but all I got was a scripted response, plus a few (2 staff) that told me it will never happen even though they wish it would. Some of the 'trolls' in the community have once been huge supporters of helping the project in meaningful ways, but it gets met with lip service and egos unchecked and eventually people give up on any legitimate hope of helping out.

I was thinking of posting the contents of some of the emails in anonymous quotes, but the writing styles are too easily recognizable and editing them detracts from any meaning they might hold. If any Staff or former staff that I conversed with in the past wants to post anything said between us, you're more than welcome to with no hard feelings.


Life is not simple and the aspirations of this Team are not simple. But yes we have been trying to simplify for far too long and now we have some velocity behind the simplification. We will not end up with as many departments as you currently see on the org chart, at least not if I have anything to say about it....even though a handful of vocal folks here think I am Diablo incarnate for this project....

I'll start by saying that you are earning some cred here by communicating. I'll give ya props for that. And I understand that you have to be extremely careful in what you do post, in case there's changes and give cause to more fuel for the fires.

Life is never simple, that's a given. Very cliche, and cheap.
IMO, there should only be ONE aspiration for the team, and community, and anyone else hoping for this project to succeed. That aspiration: A working 14.1 Pre-CU SWG emulator code base. Once we have that, the rest can and will fall into place.

Zalaxy
03-02-2011, 05:17 AM
Zalaxy,

Those are very good questions and I am sure other people are wondering the same thing. There is more info that goes along with this that explains the purpose and reasoning behind the SPLIT and RESTRUCTURE but it is all still being sorted out.

That chart is representing the SPLIT between the Devs and Non-Devs to provide a "cleaner" environment for development, but does not show the individual department level setup yet.

I won't address each of your questions right now because that is certainly not our final structure in full detail. Numerous combining discussions have already taken place, often saying the same thing you have.

The basic plan we are trying to lay out is the Founders, who are the OWNERS that never change, will oversee the major decisions and disputes but not be involved in day to day management. The Director level handles the coordination of the departments and communication/personnel issues so "the left hand knows what the right hand is doing" along with doing tasks at the department level whenever possible to help get things done. The real day to day work comes from the departments and Leaders, who are simply workers that try to keep organization and coordination in tasks needing to be done. We all need primary responsibilities but we also have secondary jobs too. For example, if an announcement needs made in the next 24 hours, then we need to know who to go to so that is accomplished properly. But that doesn't mean the Communications Member does nothing but that, quite the contrary as they are asked to help in other areas they have skills in, like support or moderating.

That is a relatively short summary and more details/changes are upcoming.
Thank you for the reply. I figured it was still in planning stages, but just wanted to understand a little better.

Newsound
03-02-2011, 07:04 AM
You know what would make this easier? Make the forums private. Take down the public servers. Just have a private forum for developers. I am all for that if it means this project gets to complete its goal of emulating SWG.

To me the public forums and public test servers are a nice bonus we get to enjoy. Totally unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. Make em invite only if you all want, doesn't matter to me as long as we all get to enjoy the finished product at the end.

rhtlvp
03-02-2011, 01:17 PM
cRush and Shotter made some very valid points.

From the outside, it seems to me that you guys are trying to mimic SOE or any other big company, when this should be an emulator project based on the community.
We've all met the guy who decides to start a business.. he rents an office, buys the furniture, the cool "CEO" leather chair, gets pen with the company name on them, business cards and all the rest made.. but then if you ask him what he's selling, or what is business plan is, he can't really give you an answer.. because he didn't think of that yet.
And in my experience, those guys don't go anywhere in the business world.

Now I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but unless you plan to turn this team into a commercial software company in the immediate future, I don't understand some of your choices.
Not to mention you don't have to coordinate 300 people. If you had to, then all those sub-teams and area leader would make sense.
The way I see it, you should have dev staff+dev leader, community staff+community leader. Period. And the "leadership" on top should only make sure everything is working as planned and everyone is doing their job.

And you have to listen to the community and allow them to help when help is needed. As long as the goal is clear, there's no problem whatsoever with the community helping.
Just keep the goal in mind: 14.1 SWG. So you can and should ignore jedi haters, cm haters, rifleman haters and the likes, because your goal is to recreate a working version of 14.1, with the good and the bad sides.
Nerfs and such should only take place (if the community so desires) afterwards, on fan servers.

Also, from the outside, it look like you lack a figure of authority who is respected and appreciated by the whole staff. And you do need one.
That person shouldn't act as a dictator, but he should be able to mediate between staff members when needed and should keep the strong egos in check.
From the bits and pieces I got to read in those documents, on the forums and on IRC, it is clear as day that you have some people with a very strong ego that are not being handled properly (don't mean to sound disrespectful, it's the best term I can think of and english isn't my primary language).
I evaluate and manage people for a living and I think I know a thing or two: from the outside and the limited information we have, that's what it looks like.

So I hope you have the right person in your staff to step up and take THAT role, which doesn't necessarily involve a lot of power but only works as long as the person has the full trust of the team. If you don't have such a person in your staff, I hope one of the future members will have what it takes.

So far I've seen a lot of double standards, of Staff members coming out with embarassing posts or remarks on the forum and on IRC, lack of moderation when moderation would be really needed, lack of answers when the community is very confused (answers we end up getting from players who are in contact with staff, most often.. when they want to share the info with the rest of the players).. well, you get my point.

Shotter
03-02-2011, 03:50 PM
It is like beating a dead horse to say "try just one Community Director" as that has never worked because that person being out of touch for 1+ days creates chaos.

I have been a part of many communities and several different projects that involved software development/public relations, and being 'out of touch' for a day has never been an issue. The SWGEmu Team has been out of touch with the community for far longer than that, and I have stated as much in the past. Chaos isn't bred by a small slip up in activity, it's bred from people that speak before they have validation of what has been happening recently. This bleeds over in to the next part.


Often the public doesn't see the chaos but sometimes when public decisions get made and then reversed quickly, well that is internal chaos spilling over into bad public decisions because person A wasn't around to see it and stop the madness from becoming public.

As Yhor said, this happens because people don't think, or can't think well enough to even be in the position of power that they are in.


Life is not simple and the aspirations of this Team are not simple.

Again, you're making mountains out of mole hills. "Due to our super aspirations we need super complexity to make sure our super aspirations can be met." Life is far more simple if you start saying that it is. The Team needs to stop trying to invent the first airplane to travel to their neighbors house for sugar.


But yes we have been trying to simplify for far too long and now we have some velocity behind the simplification.

As Yhor said, I too have been here since 2005-2006 (Although obviously not on the forum until 06), and I have never actually seen 'simplification' of the team structure, I have seen them say they were simplifying it, and when I got on the Team back in 2010, I saw no evidence of any true 'simplification', it's always been getting more and more complex and the teams been having more and more problems.


We will not end up with as many departments as you currently see on the org chart, at least not if I have anything to say about it....even though a handful of vocal folks here think I am Diablo incarnate for this project....

Truth be told you're not a Diablo, but I'm not sure if you're Jesus either. As cRush said earlier, there's no reason a single person couldn't have done multiple jobs. But now there are divisions for different jobs, and there are people in those divisions. Simplification of the SWGEmu Team would lead to firing a lot of the dead weight (Dead weight not meaning they aren't doing their jobs, but meaning that other people could do their job and their own job better than they could) that could potentially cause more 'chaos' for the Team, which it avoids like AIDS. 'Chaos' isn't bad, as long as something comes of it.

MaelDiablo
03-02-2011, 05:17 PM
even though a handful of vocal folks here think I am Diablo incarnate for this project....

Errhh nope I am Diablo incarnate!

fivo
03-03-2011, 02:19 PM
Errhh nope I am Diablo incarnate!

That's correct! I thought everyone got that memo!

Where's your TPS report, maggot!?!

OTOH to all this drama -- there is enough bull**** for all to eat a little crow. From the perspective of those on the outs I can fully understand the level of incivility they desire because this team has been giant train wreck with communication.

Everyone yelling wants things to happen to some advantage. I and (I believe) most people I associate with just want 1.0 published.

Developers drive this project inherent to the design. If anyone ever expects this project to get past the broken code that is Liberator then development has to be placed at the top of priorities.

Newsound
03-03-2011, 04:02 PM
That's correct! I thought everyone got that memo!

Where's your TPS report, maggot!?!

OTOH to all this drama -- there is enough bull**** for all to eat a little crow. From the perspective of those on the outs I can fully understand the level of incivility they desire because this team has been giant train wreck with communication.

Everyone yelling wants things to happen to some advantage. I and (I believe) most people I associate with just want 1.0 published.

Developers drive this project inherent to the design. If anyone ever expects this project to get past the broken code that is Liberator then development has to be placed at the top of priorities.

I do not understand how it could be any other way.

Shotter
03-03-2011, 05:26 PM
Developers drive this project inherent to the design. If anyone ever expects this project to get past the broken code that is Liberator then development has to be placed at the top of priorities.

So far no one in this thread has said or implied differently.

fivo
03-03-2011, 05:32 PM
So far no one in this thread has said or implied differently.

In this thread. However, outside this thread this certainly has not been the candor of speech impressed in our daily/weekly/monthly attitudes. Someone's butthurt is always seemingly more important.

Shotter
03-03-2011, 05:38 PM
Quite right, Idiocy like a cancer grows.

However that's not here, I'd leave other threads to be other threads.

Dragus
03-04-2011, 02:52 AM
- Give the EC, GM, and Support leads complete autonomous power.

http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp5/j_staltari/l_d9e9244ec2d84564a7ac68b2a4003f52.png

Because that's always a great idea.

/awkard moment cough

Shotter
03-04-2011, 04:37 AM
I didn't mean no oversight when writing that, but as it is (Or rather, as it was), Department Leads didn't have power over their own departments, there was so much unnecessary red tape that solely existed for the sake of appearing professional.

Kreen
03-04-2011, 02:18 PM
I don't recall nor do I see currently any unnecessary red tape. We can and could pretty much do whatever we wanted already (within events).

Shotter
03-04-2011, 05:45 PM
The comment wasn't directed at the EC's, GMs or Support members themselves, it was directed at the leaders of said departments.

Lorrianna
03-15-2011, 03:31 PM
Scrum Manager:
Since scrum is going to pretty much run the entire development process soon who is overseeing who in this position? Shouldn't scrum and development director be one and the same?


Hi Zalaxy. I'm the Scrum Master for the project so I'd be happy to comment on this particular question.

There are several conflicts of interest and priority between the role of Scrum Master and anyone who is a member of the Scrum Team.

By definition:

anyone who has accepted work in the Sprint Backlog to get a Player Story and one or more dependent Tasks "Done" will be members of the Scrum Team for that particular Sprint
Scrum Masters are never assigned work in the Sprint Backlog


Any activity that a person is responsible for performing who can potentially be a Scrum Team member inevitably constrains our capacity for development within any Sprint. You would see this in the Sprint Backlog where the work commitments by the Scrum Team for each Sprint are documented.

In our case, we have limited developers who can work on Core3 and in the case of our Development Team leader, the best use of his time is focused on developing and leading that effort.

The responsibility of a Scrum Master, in our case myself, is primarily to ensure that Scrum practices are being followed and to remove impediments and obstacles that are affecting the ability of the Scrum Team to finish their work.

That is the priority in use of time for the person in this role, and takes precedence over any other responsibilities such as potentially accepted work in a Sprint Backlog.

In a business setting, Scrum Masters typically come from the Project Manager ranks and one Scrum Master may perform that role for multiple concurrent projects.

In RL, the Scrum Team members do 100% of the documentation in the Sprint Backlog and Burndown Charts. We'll be using a tool called JIRA for that.

However, in our case we want to absolutely minimize overhead that detracts from our limited Developer resource doing development, so I'll be doing most if not all the work in JIRA. Again, accepting work in a Sprint Backlog would be a conflict of priorities and time with that responsibility.

GirvTech
07-22-2011, 05:34 PM
Is there or will there ever be space?

bigevil
07-22-2011, 05:36 PM
Holy necros batman. :)

Likely, but that will not even be approached until after a vanilla 14.1 release.

GirvTech
07-22-2011, 05:58 PM
Meaning maybe but not in the near future?

bigevil
07-22-2011, 06:00 PM
If I am correct, once the 14.1 is developed and put into 1.0 form, other things can be considered. I would not set your alarm clock for it if that helps. No ETA's are given for any current milestones for project. Sry.

GirvTech
07-22-2011, 06:02 PM
fair enough. Thanks for answering! o/