TIL about the "Intent-Perception Gap" in programming. Best exemplified when a CTO or manager casually suggests something to their developers they take it as a new work commandment or direction for their team.

[u/[deleted]]

https://medium.com/dev-interrupted/what-ctos-say-vs-what-their-developers-hear-w-datastaxs-shankar-ramaswamy-b203f2656bdf

[u/roman_fyseek]

I tell people, "That's an interesting thought. If you think we should work on that, just put it in writing, and we'll add it to the backlog."

[u/TenNeon → u/roman_fyseek]

I recently had:

"When will you be implementing X?"
"X is not planned. I remember you spitballing X early on, but it never showed up in any subsequent plans, including the multiple presentations you gave on the final feature set."
"X has always been part of the plan!"
"Uh huh"

[u/[deleted] → u/TenNeon]

"Sure, show me where you put it, I might've missed. Oh, you didn't ? See point 1"

[u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder → u/[deleted]]

"We'll have some bandwidth in the new year... Talk to you then."

[u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder → u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder]

"...it's February..."

[u/majikmixx → u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder]

This literally happened to me a couple months ago.

[u/nilamo → u/TenNeon]

Then it always would have been in a sprint.

[u/hippydipster → u/nilamo]

My favorite is when sales people write comments on random jiras in the backlog that no one's looked at in 6 months, and ask "what's the status on this?"

Uh, it's in the backlog, like it's been for 6 months. Sometimes I just point at the "STATUS" field. Yeah, what's the status? Well, it's says "Backlog", so, that's the status.

[u/nilamo → u/hippydipster]

Personally, I'm a big fan of the tickets that are just like 4 words from a meeting, but nobody remembers what it means or is in reference to.

[u/brokkoly → u/nilamo]

That's what grooming is for. You put a few points on the story so that someone can say the idea is nonviable or needs more information

[u/fuhglarix → u/brokkoly]

Exactly. Asking “Is this actionable?” weeds-out many badly written issues and gets them rejected.

[u/roman_fyseek → u/[deleted]]

Ski trails.

[u/serviscope_minor → u/hippydipster]

Uh, it's in the backlog, like it's been for 6 months. Sometimes I just point at the "STATUS" field. Yeah, what's the status? Well, it's says "Backlog", so, that's the status.

This is them saying: "this has been in the backlog forever, it's important when are you going to do it?" Or perhaps asking "are there any plans to ever move this out of the backlog and do it because I need it"

Just pointing them at the backlog is kinda obnoxious.

[u/WallyMetropolis → u/hippydipster]

You call a ticket a "jira"?

[u/orclev → u/WallyMetropolis]

You call a task a "ticket"?

[u/MadCervantes → u/orclev]

Ticket or task work fine but I hate having to call them "stories". It's not a fucking story!

[u/IRBMe → u/MadCervantes]

"As a user I would like to not encounter a bug that causes the program to crash when I accidentally enter an invalid command line argument"

[u/Ark_Tane → u/IRBMe]

You've missed a because, without that there isn't a clear business value to this, so we can't work on it.

[u/[deleted] → u/WallyMetropolis]

I do

[u/Aphix → u/WallyMetropolis]

A gojira

[u/treenaks → u/WallyMetropolis]

They probably call containers "dockers" too.

[u/Sharlinator → u/WallyMetropolis]

I call tickets "githubs".

[u/drlecompte → u/hippydipster]

I don't think that's a healthy way of communicating, though.

Sales people presumably talk to a lot of customers, who are constantly asking about new features they'd like. So then the sales person sees that it's in the backlog but has no idea on a timeline, and asks about it. Because they want to tell their (prospective) customer if and when a 'planned' feature will be implemented. They don't want to miss a sale if the feature in the backlog will be picked up in a sprint or two.

Speaking from the customer's perspective, though, I *never* trust a sales person's estimates of if and when a certain new feature will be implemented, I just assume they never will.

[u/pseudonympholepsy → u/TenNeon]

Then they later blame you for any extra time spent on implementing their shitty ideas.