Out of context
The product person perspective:
Developers must be instantly available to analyse or estimate whatever we need analysed or estimated. Also, I’m very important, and this is why I am in meetings all the time. Look at my outlook calendar, I won’t even have time to eat lunch until next Wednesday. That’s how important I am.
The developer perspective:
I’m a very intelligent person. Possibly the most intelligent person. It is of vital importance that you do not interrupt me. If you do, my brain will stop functioning for at least twenty minutes, because science. Also, all the requirements are useless, so I need product people to be instantly available to answer any question I may have. Or else my brain will stop working again.
What’s going on here?
It’s almost like there’s some kind of mutual dependency between product and development. At the same time, both parties would rather not talk to the other, unless they initiate it themselves. We try to fix this with meetings. We define a space in time where both parties grudgingly agree to be present. The defined period is usually exactly one hour. You can’t get anything done in less, and more than one hour just sounds too much.
Some meetings have agendas, but they are optional and rarely used. The purpose of a meeting is to try to figure out if anyone remember what we agreed in the previous one. No one ever does.
Don’t disturb
So meetings don’t work. But if we try to just talk to each other, someone ends up getting disturbed. Nowadays, they’re likely to be offended as well. But why? Because people shuffle up and ask you about something else entirely than whatever it is you are doing at the time. And why is that? Because they’re working on something else entirely. The product guy for the very product you are working on, or even worse, a developer on your team, are somehow working on something completely different than you.
Out of context
So it turns out, the problem isn’t the question as such, but when the question is out of context. If I ask a question or share a comment that is actually relevant to your current work, you don’t have to context switch.
I’m afraid there is no solution to this problem. The only thing I can think of, is a situation where everyone works on the same thing, and that’s obviously a fantasy. If we have five super important projects, of course we have to do them all at the same time. That makes sense.
Yes, it’s completely okay to assign 20% of Dave’s time to each of those projects, I’ll let him know.
Just make sure no one talks to him, and he’ll be fine.
