http://uk.businessinsider.com/pivotal-906-am-breakfast-meeti...
"So Pivotal decided to employ both a stick and a carrot. The stick is a mandatory morning meeting at 9 a.m., where your absence will likely be noted. The carrot is the breakfast buffet, "sort of a prize to get in," Mee says."
I've never noticed anyone marking a roll, punching a card or scanning the room.
I guess I don't see it your way. The word "manipulative" implies two things: first, that I am a dupe. And second, that there is a malicious intent to trick people into doing something against their interest.
I've been at Pivotal for three years. If the intent is malicious, then it's been executed with such universal and flawless attention to detail across every manager and director I've dealt with that I am simply unable to distinguish it from honesty.
Given that it's indistinguishable, I'm just going to pretend I work for and with honest people, no matter how perfect their conspiracy to be nice to me might be.
We're not a scrum shop. XP with Lean trimmings. Which we constantly tinker with.
In the long run, the process is built on co-location and pairing. Of these, we'll take pairing. Which only really works if everyone is present at the same time: if you create and dissolve pairs as the number of engineers fluctuates, then you create a really confusing fan-out/fan-in effect on the work in flight.
I worked on a project where were spread across two timezones, which simulated people coming at different times. We'd be 2 pairs, 4 pairs, then 2 pairs. It was a carwreck.