## Lunchtime, 12:00pm B: Want to come to lunch with us? A: I'd love to, but I'm gonna skip this time. There's something I want to work on. B: What? A: It's nothing. Just like... a birdfeeder. B: Why are you working on a birdfeeder? A: For my house. B: You don't need to build those man, just buy one. A: I know. Just kinda wanted to make one. B: Ok well if you're gonna be building something during work hours, let's wait until the planning meeting this afternoon. A: It's lunch time. B: Ok man, if you want to spend your lunch hour this way, knock yourself out. ## After Lunch, 1:00pm A: _(Showing off finished birdfeeder)_ Hey B, check it out. B: Nice! _(Narrator: B continues to admire the birdfeeder.)_ B: This is amazing! A: Haha nah. I mean it's a little crooked. I think I could do better next time. B: Wait wait before you waste any more time refactoring let's meet and talk about the design. A: Design of what? B: The birdfeeder. A: Like, before I make another one? B: No no don't make another one. A: Why? B: We've got a working POC here. A: POC of what? B: Of a product! A: A product how? B: We can sell this! A: I was gonna take that one--- B: No not that one. First we need to focus on scaling the current design. A: Why? B: The production process. We need to start hiring. A: Hiring who? B: Developers with experience deploying Aviary Catering Platforms in production environments. A: I was just gonna put this in my backya--- B: Let's discuss in the planning meeting. ## Planning Meeting, 5:00pm C: Ok so, let's look at the tasks we have cued up for the next sprint. B: I put a few tickets in the backlog and made a new epic for the ACP. A: What's the ACP? \[BCD\]: Aviary Catering Platform. A: The birdfeeder? B: ANC is coming up next month in SF and I think we should aim to present our Platform there. A: What's ANC? B: Aviary Nutrition Conference. A: That's a thing? B: A huge thing. I go every year. A: ... C: Let's stay on task. This is the planning meeting. B: Good point. Ok so the first ticket in the ACP epic is to write a design document for the ACP. A: For the birdfeeder? B: _(Winces)_ ...Yes. A: Why exactly? B: What's the question? A: What's the point of the design document? B: All our products have a design document. It's just a quick writeup of the specification so stakeholders know what they can expect from the product and what features it provides. A: So you want to do that for the birdfeeder? B: It's just a basic level of due diligence and our customers like to see that. A: We don't have any customers. B: _(Losing patience)_ Look when C gives a slide deck to an investor, he needs to tell them what we're going to be telling to customers about the offering. C: Let's stay on task. A: Ok sorry I'm not trying to derail the meeting. Just like, to clarify, we're writing a design document for the birdfeeder. B: For the ACP. A: Is that the birdfeeder? B: Ok let's make sure we're clear on the road map here. I think the birdfeeder you made is better than anything else on the market. But it's not just about the technology. So over the coming quarter I'd like you to help us build it into a service platform that our customers can plug into for Ornithology News, Recent Sitings, Current and Historical Seed Receptacle Status. D: I'll take the dashboard ticket. A: Does anyone actually want all that? B: _(Frowning)_ We have leads. A: Where? B: In the sales pipeline. A: I just mean like, would any of you use this yourselves. Like at home. Even if it was free. B: I'm not really a bird person, but--- C: Team can we please? We only have 45 more minutes. A: Sorry I'm sorry. So which tickets are mine? B: Great, we were just about to cover that. C: We want you to take the lead on the ACP project, which is why it's important we get aligned on the near term objectives. B: We'll have the backend team develop the storage and retrieval system. A: What's that for? B: Distributed consensus. Partition tolerance. Database chakras. A: Database what? B: That's the backend team's job. A: Am I the backend team? _(Everyone laughs.)_ B: You don't need to worry about that. They're in Jakarta. They do Java. We outsourced it. A: Ok. D: I think the dashboard ticket is 7 points not 3. C: Let's call it 5. B: So your job is to lead the infrastructure effort for the ACP. A: What does infrastructure mean here specifically? B: Materials and Craftsmanship. A: Like "wood" and "making it"? B: Making it in a way that's provably conformant to the spec. A: What's the spec? B: It's outlined in the design document. C: Guys please, can we focus? A: Is this not focusing?! B: Don't worry, I'll take the ticket to write up the design document. A: For the birdfeeder? B: Yes. A: Have you made one before? B: _(Insulted)_ Look I'm not trying to be adversarial here, I'm just describing the standard way of doing things. C: Guys we really need to get back on task. D: Can I write the dashboard in Reflect? B: Of course. Use whatever you think is best. A: Can I build the birdfeeder out of any kind of wood? B: We need to make sure to stay compliant, let's stick to the parameters in the specification. A: Where was that again? B: In the design document. I'll write it. Won't take more than a few weeks. A: And then I build the birdfeeder how it says in the doc you write? D: _(Looks at E.)_ E: _(Shrugs.)_ B: We're not building another birdfeeder. We already have a birdfeeder. A: The one I hacked up over lunch? B: Look I thought it was great work. Why make another one? C: Please don't say hacked up when we've got investors around. A: So my job is to build the birdfeeder, in accordance with the spec that B writes up over the next couple weeks, and that birdfeeder is the birdfeeder I already built? B: Look it's just a formality, but it's important to have everything in place before we go live. A: Ok. Sorry. Why again? C: In case there's litigation. F: Which there will be. Unless we do this right. G: _(To F)_ "The process is the punishment" as they say. F: _(Nods knowingly at G.)_ A: Does that mean I'm like... done? B: With what? A: The tickets I'm assigned? B: You could say that. A: Why did you make the ticket? B: We make the tickets as documentation of our plans for the coming weeks. H: I appreciate having the tickets. B: Thank you, H. C: Yeah I don't think there's much objection to the tickets. A: I um... I sort of have trouble doing anything via tickets. _(Assorted eyes widen.)_ C: How do you mean? A: I can make things just fine... H: I don't mind the tickets. A: I just don't know how to make anything, when there's a ticket for it. I don't know how to think in the way the tickets are written. H: It feels nice to come into work, knock them off one at a time, move them to done. _(H Makes a hand gesture that seems to suggest "Washing one's hands of something.")_ H: Feels like a game. B: What other development methodology would you propose? A: I don't know. B: There's Jitterbug, Cupcake, Always On Point, Upside Down, Hotdog, Extreme Hotdog, Zitterbewegung. A: One where we make stuff. _(The room laughs.)_ B: You can _make_ anything with any methodology, it's just an issue of team management and planning ahead. H: What's Zitterbewegung? D: It's basically Extreme Jitterbug. B: You don't want to just be "making stuff" haphazardly all over the place. It would be chaos. A: Can I just make stuff... not haphazardly? C: I think we can all agree that's what we're trying to do here. B: Yeah A let's discuss this in our next 1-on-1. A: When's that? I still can't log into my company calendar. B: Right after this meeting. A: Great.