Agile Software Development: Here's What Bugs You

A few weeks ago, I asked: What bothers you? What gets under your skin? What really pushes your buttons?

The results... are in.

Seems it's not so much what bothers you...

... as whom.

Knock knock

There's something different around here. Really different.

Not on this side of the glass.

On the other side. On your side.

Not too long ago, Development that Pays was a very quiet place.

Just me and my subscriber. (Who I suspect was my mum.)

But now, well, you're here.

And your being here, has made ALL the difference.

Not only does it keep me on my toes, but I can now do things that would have been impossible a year ago.

I can, for example, ask for help.

Which is what I did before Xmas. I called it the Bad Santa Survey.

A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.

(And a extra special thank you to those of you that used this free-text box to wish me a Happy Xmas! What a lovely lot you are!)

The responses were extremely interesting and have given me plenty of ideas for future episodes.

And there were some surprises. Two of which I'd like to share with you today.

The Survey

The survey had just two questions - which is one one more than I'd originally planned. I added in the What's Your Job Title question at the last minute. Just on a hunch.

My hunch was that your pet peeves might have something to do with other members of your team.

And would you believe, I was right!

The surprise was the sheer number of responses that mentioned another team role.

Game on

Want to play a quick game?

I'll show you a "comment", and you guess the role of the person that made the comment.

Here's the first one:

"The Product Owner estimating with a combination of art and feel"

That was a Lead Developer.

Next one:

"Navigating shifting retirements from stakeholders"

That was a Product Owner.

Next one:

"Product Owners that that think that development is trivial and 'it won't take long'"

That was a Developer

Next:

"It's all on the Jira ticket, but Developer says he'd heard nothing about it"

That was from a Product Owner

And finally:

"There's nothing on the Jira ticket"

That was from a Lead Developer

I love the "mirror-image" of the last two.

Wot No Business Owner?

The second surprise was that no one identified themselves as a Business Owner.

Having had a couple of weeks to think about it, I've come to the conclusion that the problem is the label itself.

"Business Owner" is not the right name for this role.

Which is slightly awkward, given that I've been using the term "Business Owner" for 18 months.

Can you help me with this?

The role I'm talking about sits immediately above the Product Owner and and the Lead Developer.

And it's ideally the role that has financial responsibility for the output of that whole software development team.

So that's my question: What's the name of this role in your organisation?

Let me know in the comments below!