The Sad, Dejected Presentation

We had a meeting that involved multiple teams. At one point we went back to our desks and talked about the plan for the next Quarter. We looked at the main features, put them in order of how we wanted to tackle them. We considered the length of time they would take, and which ones could be done in parallel. The Product Owner (PO) drew up a nice Gantt chart with rectangles showing the size, and the rows showing the parallel approach.

We had an hour, but took 45 minutes, then rejoined the meeting. The PO did our presentation describing all the work items and the justification to the order. The host then asks the next team’s presenter to come up.

The main developer shakes his head, another developer looks down and plays with his phone. Their manager, who is normally really confident, speaks in a dejected tone.

“We don’t Story Point our work, so we didn’t know the size of the work. We simply didn’t have enough time to plan, so we just wrote down a few bits of work that was coming up.”

Pretty much the end of their presentation.

Here are my comments:

1. We knew about this meeting a week in advance. How come they didn’t think about their work in that time?
2. 1 hour was more than enough time to fill in the form for the presentation.
3. We hadn’t Story Pointed our work either, and we don’t have clear requirements, but we still came up with a respectable plan.
4. Despite our PO explaining what each feature on our plan was, this team made no attempt to explain what any of their work was. Surely if someone does a presentation before you, you need to make some attempt at matching the quality.

In their section of potential risks, they mention they don’t have a PO, so struggle to prioritise their work.

Here are my comments:

1. Although we have a PO, I think a lot of our prioritisation is actually driven by the development team. The PO adds the overall idea, but we tell him how feasible it is and what order it needs to be completed in.
2. Out of all the teams in the business, I think you can argue they are the team that has the lowest need for a PO, hence they haven’t hired one for them. Their requirements are driven by other internal team’s requests. They can easily decide on the priority by what they are asking for.
3. In our appraisals, we are encouraged to provide evidence of times where we have stepped up, and this situation is a prime example where you can show how organised/responsible you are. Making little attempt during a meeting, and being disorganised during your project when you have a backlog of 100 bugs/feature requests from other teams is a bit irresponsible. Surely you can judge how serious the bugs are, and how important the features are for the business. It’s not like they have no work on their board; they really do have 100+ items on there.