That analogy understates it. Starting a big fresh project with an idling “team” is really inefficient because the TL needs to figure out how to keep everyone busy.

The better way is to have a smaller number of people work on requirements and figuring stuff out before a whole team lets rip. Some tasks just don’t parallelise well so a 9 person team isn’t good for everything.

I like this idea of a smaller team feeding work to the bigger team. What does such a smaller team look like? What kind of roles, etc?

Just take 30 in another country, ideally with 12 hours timezone difference.

Mandatory 10pm phone calls too.

You have done this? That sounds bad.

Yeah, when I worked for Microsoft it was pretty common.

This is so common it hurts.

I wonder where this comes from. Is it just hubris mixed with incompetence?

This happens when managers think of themselves as the engineering division and the sole isolated source of value while viewing engineers as cost associated with delivery. The proposal PowerPoint is the product and the actual product is a Proof-of-Work that could retroactively nullify pre-realized values.

Wow! This is truly the best explanation of this I’ve ever heard. It explains a lot that I’ve seen.

Mixed with desperation and ignorance. Managers only have so many levers they can push to course correct a situation.

But, it take hubris and incompetence to get there.

So explain it properly.

"9 WOMEN CAN'T DELIVER A BABY IN A MONTH"

So how many women do we need, like 15? Maybe a Scrum master who knows the Lamaze method?

We should setup three day workshop about it. And of course invite no women to it.

only pregnant men, we are dedicated to diversity at this company

If you hire enough women, one of them will produce a baby within a month.

See, we just need that 9x dev.

Once they've shown they can do it once it's perfectly reasonable to bet the entire business on them doing it the next month.

Oh, and also, the diversity team have noticed we have hired a lot of young people so we're only hiring over-50s this year.

> Once they've shown they can do it once it's perfectly reasonable to bet the entire business on them doing it the next month.

That's true. A team of 20 women can easily produce one baby a month.

Nine women can't, but the people who like to say "nine women can't produce a baby in a month" are almost never trying to tell you that you can fix your problem by expanding your team to the appropriate size.

Acquiring the competitor is a valid strategy but you need both money and a competitor.

There is no doubt Scrum is the answer here. We should also use story points. Then it can't fail.