Abandon Hope!
From the archives
It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope!
John Cleese - Clockwise (1986)
This is a post from 2008, in which I describe one of my most memorable positions on the use of a term when building products. I routinely encounter people with whom I’ve worked over the years who tell me that every time they hear the word “hope” used when referring to work, they think of me!
In a meeting at a client today, a developer was giving a status update. He mentioned that he hoped to have something completed by the end of this week.
He hoped.
I've joked with colleagues before that there is simply no place for hope in the software development industry. When I said it, I meant "hope" in the "abandon hope all ye who enter here" sense, but when I thought about it, though, there really should be no "hope" in software development.
Progress should be based on reality, i.e Yesterday's Weather, and not on some optimistic, rose-coloured glasses view of what could be if the planets all align correctly. Software developers, their management, their families, pets and minor acquaintances are all notoriously optimistic when estimating how long it will take to accomplish a task. Therefore, when estimating, we need to draw upon experience and a proven track record. Where there is uncertainty, use a Spike to gather enough information to be able to provide an estimate that's devoid of hope, and full of evidence!
The developer could have said, "At my current pace, I will be done by the end of the week", or, "Without any other distractions, I will be done by the end of the week". Even better, he could have said, "The last time I did something like this [or this size], it took me 3 days. So, I should be done by the end of the week."
Semantics? I think not.
If you work for a for-profit company, you might want to ask yourself what this productivity is for. If you have an Agile conscience, don't you want your work to be directed toward user satisfaction, toward giving the customers what they need - what they ask for, adjusted to fit the constraints you've helped them to understand?
But your company has a fiduciary responsibility to direct your productivity toward the maximization of profit. The image of a loving provider of wonderfulness to the world, which your company has spent millions to promulgate, means nothing in the face of that legal obligation.
For me, this is a bedrock contradiction and a source of frustration and self-doubt that drove me out of the dev racket for a while.,
I am awed by the dedication of the folks who struggle to bring agility to to profit-driven hierarchically stratified companies, but it's a sisyphean mug's game. The facts of the fundamental incompatibility of priorities don't give a fuck about our feelings.
Hope is an opiate, and cold turkey would just aggravate the suffering.
P. S. Please have some respect for "semantics" - your dismissive use of the word comes off as ignorance.