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A few thoughts. You need to weaponize your knowledge.
1. Be aware of the difference between developer Agile and MBA Agile. It sounds like these folks are MBA style. Use that against them.
2. You say they dress and talk well. Throw out a few design pattern names. Hopefully they don't know them. That may cut them down to size and impresses management.
3. Make them fight among themselves. Tell one that their module must do this and talk to this other person's module thus. "You do not have a choice". Enforce that
4. Make a high level design and ask the/any programmer where their work fits into it.
.... Youngster....
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Michael Breeden wrote: You need to weaponize your knowledge.
They're masters at this part of it all..
Had a meeting a few weeks back where I got a spiel about this process, that pattern, "re-hydrating entities".. basically re-loading the data from the database, but why say something in half a dozen understandable words when you can talk in paragraphs on a podium in front of clueless management? 
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Well, you could perhaps go to the lowest possible level and just tell the truth. "We aren't getting anything done here". Really, could you ask what the "value" is or the "deliverable"? That is what Agile is all about.
Really, talking at a podium in front of management? That sounds too late in any case.
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I'd like to buy you a beer.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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and I'd like to drink that beer! 
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R. Giskard Reventlov wrote: Simple: toss out agile and do it properly.
I was too chicken to post anything like that in public. (pssst, I think I was the tenth upvote on the comment)
R. Giskard Reventlov wrote: Oh, and fire all the script-kiddies and get some real coders in.
Disagree; totally.
Age is irrelevant. Yes, experience does count, but it's a matrix thing, not a linear one.
I'm Not sure of this at all, so ask a real lawyer or Human Resources pro, but I think it's against the law to test for verbal skills with respect to any business decision with employees; whether they be prospective, contract, or full time W2 staff members.
With that caveat, and reading your description, I highly suspect that your teams contain some members with very low verbal skills, and some members with very high verbal skills.
My sole opinion: That is the root cause of what you are describing.
Second factor: The Agile Approach. At times, I am convinced that the whole thing was intended to be a hoax, much like Administratium. (Go look it up if you've never seen the word before.)
Third factor: Money. You have used financial forces to induce, entice, and goad people into professing personal belief, adherence, and agreement with The Agile propaganda (^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H development methodology).
Put those three factors together: [1] Disparate verbal skills, [2] The Agile Approach, [3] Financial forces; and I believe that what you are describing will happen in pretty much any project that requires software, firmware, electronics, website interaction, databases, whatever.
The self-contradicting paradoxes within The Agile Manifesto are so rampant and so wantonly linguistically absurd that I truly wonder how much alcohol is present in the bloodstreams of those people who make the decision to use it.
Turbo-charge these paradoxes with financial forces, then apply them to teams with no formal assessment of personal verbal skills among them, and, well, that's what you get !
My sole opinion. Anybody else who believes this has to pay me a dollar.
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Interesting response!
C-P-User-3 wrote: With that caveat, and reading your description, I highly suspect that your teams contain some members with very low verbal skills, and some members with very high verbal skills.
I have no idea what this means in reference to my post. I am guessing you are taking the phrase script-kiddies and misinterpreting it. By script-kiddies I mean developers straight out of uni with little to no experience of the real world. All of the people in the team are articulate and smart (young or old).
C-P-User-3 wrote: I think it's against the law to test for verbal skills with respect to any business decision with employees; whether they be prospective, contract, or full time W2 staff members.
I have no idea if that's true or not. Regardless, you (or anyone) is not going to hire someone for a job that is incapable of communicating their ideas or displaying knowledge of development. That is the point of an interview.
Anyway, think you may have the wrong end of the stick here.
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The real answer could/should be dogfooding[^].
Make the developers use the thing themselves.
It may be that the product / project is so overly boring that no one really uses it anyways so the devs descend into tweaking algorithms which are interesting to devs.
Somehow transform them into thinking about actually using the product and how important the final result it. This may work.
Edit
My point here is that the problem you are describing is that there is no "product owner" / visionary who is really driving things.
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raddevus wrote: there is no "product owner" / visionary who is really driving things
Yes, you are correct.. the devs are left to decide for themselves what is or isn't important. There have been (so far) no repercussions for failing to meet deadlines.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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They're coding for code-sake!
Too bad the final product isn't just a set of algorithms you're selling.
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raddevus wrote: They're coding for code-sake!
That's exactly it, the product is treated as some kind of theoretical university project that never needs to be delivered..
raddevus wrote: Too bad the final product isn't just a set of algorithms you're selling.
At this point, it really doesn't matter what the final product is - it'll probably never be delivered in any case
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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How about appointing a team leader, a real taskmaster who
- does the sprint planning and prepares tasks
- assigns the tasks
- whacks them over the head when they complain about their tasks
- whacks them over the head if they take too long
- whacks them over the head when they mess with sometthing that's not their business
- whacks them over the head if they have too many ideas
- whacks them over the head for nothing once in a while, just to keep them on the edge
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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- owns a large, heavy ClueBat.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Drill sarge, team lead - where is the difference?
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Someone who keeps some kind of tally and owns a whacker? 
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Yes, and if that does not works we can also get some chains and overseers with whips 
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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You might be on to something.. get off it quick!
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Dang, my last project management courses were in Egypt. We got some nice pyramids built back then.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Great comment, and appreciated by one who eats dogfood! My company is so small that I provide frontline customer support and training for anything I develop. It's way different when your goal becomes to minimize phone calls/remotes/interruptions! I do think you wind up with better software in the end when devs interact with end users at some level.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Thanks and I totally agree with you on your comment, especially...
kmoorevs wrote: It's way different when your goal becomes to minimize phone calls/remotes/interruptions!
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It's surprising how streamlined an application UI can become when the programmer has to use the application often.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Foothill wrote: It's surprising how streamlined an application UI can become when the programmer has to use the application often.
That is a fantastic point and so very true. Great stuff!
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If you are Agile then this should be brought up and addressed in the sprint retrospective meeting.
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It is.. every retrospective is the same: "why did we only deliver x points when we committed to [much bigger] y at the start?"
My answer's the same every time, but the next day we start the same process again.. 
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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