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Agreed!!! Very frustrating also. I have pointed out that it is a lie like the other misinformation that curses our society, and quite dangerous. They simply ignore it and since they seem to believe in (Agile) process over people, I'm a bad guy for objecting. I'm not always popular in Agile Training sessions. I am the last developer standing though. The C++ guy is retiring because of the absurdity of this. I could go on about the intellectual crime this is , but ...
What I want to know, is where did that Interchangeability of skills idea come from? Then maybe I can answer it.
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I'm no Agile expert but am unaware that Agile mandates this. It can happen wherever managers have little knowledge of software development and think that developers are like assembly line workers.
If one guy is leaving because of this, the reason for his departure should be conveyed to management. If they're not willing to listen, maybe you should start thinking about your next job.
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One of the core agile principles is “people over process”. Has anyone actually read any of the literature in the org.
Interchangeability comes from outsourcing.
I am a proponent of don’t learn it until you are going to use it. If you cross train someone and they don’t use it for 3 months they will have 1% retention.
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That's the cute part. I'm trying to slip that in as "Process Over People" because that is obviously what they have chosen and I don't think they are bright enough to realize what I am doing. I want it to become the company Agile canon. Eventually, someone will notice. We have one contractor on PTO that would notice immediately but he might think it funny enough to say nothing. I want to hear it repeated just once by the Agile leadership team.
As for outsourcing, what do you think the chances are of picking up a resource with really great C# in AWS Lambda skills as well as the CloudFormation expertise to make the system? My company decided to go all in with Lambda, many thousands of lines and many libraries in a single application. AWS says not to do that. Even our Cloud executive says Lambdas should be no more than 70 lines. This project is over 135 .cs files. I warned them it would be unmaintainable but they ignored that too.
I've spent 3 years ramping up from MS C# ecology to Open Source, .Net Core, AWS. I got my AWS Assoc Arch cert. Tell me about trying to retain what you aren't using. According to this I also need detailed knowledge of iSeries as well since we consume that data. There are some skills in our original team that I can't even describe well, but everyone is supposed to know them. The interesting thing is that their Interchangeability ideal is very similar to the communist ideal. I doubt they are aware of political history though.
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The salient point about Agile is that, with great agility, management can declare their company to be Agile, without any clue. Not that anyone actually has a clue as to what Agile means in terms of skill sets and practice.
Thank goodness neurosurgeons can't willy-nilly declare themselves to be brain surgeons.
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I am a brain surgeon. Thank you for respecting that.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Yes, my company is apparently agile. Or so they tell our customers.
Luckily this isn't very noticable for us developers.
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To any organisation and 3000 devs is a lot, having and indispensable person is a risk, having a small team is a larger risk. You really can't blame them for trying to mitigate the risk.
While you are doing all that cross training you will of course be expected to produce at the same pace or faster.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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They aren't mitigating the risk at all. The rest of the remaining team members don't even know C# or C++ so I don't see how cross-training is feasible. I'm the last developer resource for 3.5+ important projects and while I've been working for a long time for cloud expertise, there is a lot of it and they do not see that as requiring time to develop. They have lost one totally indispensable person at least, perhaps 2.
Again, I am most interested in where they got the idea that all members of an Agile team had interchangeable skills. Then maybe I can figure out the context of this. It was not HR. Any idea?
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I would assume you have a risk management team or even person and they should certainly have identified the glaring operational risk you represent.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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No. We've had a great deal of management churn and their main focus is digital transformation. They are still panicked from the ransomware attack. It was recognized long ago by my manager that I owned too much, but the C++ guy could have gotten a new C# person up to speed. He's on Run now and soon gone cuz he hates the way things are going. When it was proposed, I told them not to use AWS Lambdas for huge projects. There is little advantage and takes great expertise to maintain. Expertise that is rare and that I am still working to develop. Lambda is supposed to be small functions for micro services. The Lambda project I wrangle now is over 135 .cs files. Hey, it will be OK. We have lots of new VPs. I was known for risky behavior as a skier, big wave eater, and lobster hunter. These folks would really impress me if it was a calculated risk. Too many lies and illusions. I do push back. Lies have never worked as a strategy for me.
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The idea of team members being able to do your job isn't far-fetched.
When you go on vacation or resign, your work should continue.
The idea, however, is that people with the same skill sets are interchangeable, not people with different skill sets.
Just tell your manager you'll do his job today and he can do yours.
When he tells you that's ridiculous just tell him the difference between your two jobs are about as big as between you and the RPG guy.
Although I think you and the SQL guy, at least, should have some overlap (not necessarily vice versa, most programmers know some SQL, but DBA's often aren't programmers).
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This is great! I'm fairly well trained in Agile and I could find my way around JIRA. Let them find their way around my work. Thanks for a great tactical suggestion... I am working my way up the chain today though, asking where they got that interchangeability idea. At 2 is the meeting with the top Agile person and I'll ask her.
As for me resigning, they broke up the band already. Two of the critical people are now on the Run team and both want to quit. I'm the only developer left on the Build team... as we do the digital transformation dance to AWS ... Lambda. You tell me how that's going to happen. I told them when they proposed it that it was an unmaintainable system. AWS says not to try to convert big applications to Lambda. Even our Cloud top executive said a Lambda shouldn't be over 70 lines long. Ours includes over 135 .cs files. I'm stressed out enough that I can't sleep.
modified 10-Jun-21 6:05am.
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Michael Breeden wrote: I'm stressed out enough that I can't sleep.
This is a sign you need to switch over to Team Run as well, after doing one last project on Team Build: An application that automatically locks your computer at 5PM on workdays and won't allow an unlock until 8AM the next day.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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When they want a generalist and specialist in one package 
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So where did that idea of identical skills on the team come from?
higher in the hierarchy a thing must have changed. maybe as far as two years ago.
although it will be great for all of you to make that fast knowledge transfer, the situation smells like someone has been appointed to cut the workforce or someone (presumably new in the management) wants to show off by cutting costs.
if you stay and they cut somebody else you'll get overloaded with work. all i say is based on my personal experience, i may be 100% wrong.
my tendency is going to places that are more relaxed for work, even if they pay less. that is, if one can afford such a job.
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It is a goal state that everyone can do any ticket. Avoiding silos is a Good Thing(tm). It's also good for your career if it lets you learn new things. That said, it is a management failure to think this will happen on day one.
If management wants this to work, they have to acknowledge that software development is an impossibly broad field to master (like, say, medicine). They then must dismantle all the specialist cross-functional teams and create teams based on skill set (a C++ team, a db team, etc). They also have to allocate time for cross-training and documenting. Betcha they didn't do that.
They probably expected agile to work by magic. Just by saying it's name, they could summon agile. I wish it worked that way but it doesn't.
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I don't see how specialized teams could help any - C++, Db, etc.
I don't think they consider that SW development might be difficult.
I document. No one else does. ... Ya know, all the other teams are far bigger. Maybe that helps them.
I think there will be panic before magic.
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I have run into the same Agile mentality at my last two companies. It seems that developer interchangeability is "the elimination of siloed skills" that is the Agile buzzword of the day. Both companies were experiencing developer turnover and reductions.
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Fascinating. Now that sorta makes sense with what is going on. I wonder if they notice they aren't producing any software?
Were those companies choosing to reduce the number of developers or were they just leaving?
I think the question will be "are you still going to produce software"? And then "who is going to produce it"?
... So, "we need interchangeability of skills". "That sounds like a great idea, I could use some help". "How are we going to do get people up to speed with the tools we use"? Ya know, it really fits with the amazing loss of talent we've had. 2/3 of the team is gone. There is no one to maintain the systems I built and always maintained. Well, ... the pressure is on. Yesterday, my former manager said that the project timeline would need to be doubled. The new "HR manager" said that I and the two new guys (MS ecology, not Open Source) would need to step up and start that project moving. I mentioned that I've been working 11+ hour days. Better still, I told them from the start that that technology was unmaintainable by mortals. I wonder how long it will take.
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First company was restructuring and attrition. Second company was a mixture of constant firings, attrition and dictatorship Agile driving good developers away. Three developers left my first month and the rate reduced a bit, but was still constant. I was a contractor let go after 9 months.
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My first IT job was as a Trainee Programmer, working on an ICL 1901, with 16K, (words), of memory and no hard disk. All data processing was done via mag tape.
Programs (COBOL & Plan Assembler) were hand-written on coding sheets and punched on to paper tape, by the punch & verify team. Your program was compiled overnight, by the operators, and in the morning you arrived in fear of the missing full-stop, that generated dozens, (sometimes hundreds) of compile errors. There was no Development, Test or UAT systems. Just Production.
These days, I tweak a few lines of code; build/compile; unit test; repeat. Sometimes dozens of times for the same routine - because I can't be @rsed to think through how the whole program should work. And then I have the 'safety nets' of Code Review, QA and UAT.
Who'd have thought 40 years ago, I'd be sitting here today with my own computer (with a screen!) gradually honing my code until I manage to get something close to working. Back then I'd have been happy to have a sharp pencil.
In those days, you had to be disciplined and you had to get everything right. The young people of today...
The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch - YouTube[^]
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I don't believe you 
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ICL 1904 under George III for me (university computer). Punched cards that you had to punch yourself, and operators who dropped them just for the heck of it.
First actual job was a Prime 400 at 0.5 MIPS, 8 MB of memory, and 160 MB HDD. This ran with 32 concurrent users logged in and working. Gawd knows how, that wouldn't run a digital watch these days ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Ah, Harvard architecture. I like that. Many registers in the processor, memory may have the weirdest word formats. Sounds like fun.
And you would not believe what you get when some former mainframe guys decide to design a microprocessor that way, a hybrid between Harvard and Princeton (aka. von Neumann) architectures with the somewhat limiting word size of 8 bits.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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