The Twelve Tasks Of Christmas

Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX
Published in
3 min readDec 22, 2022

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It’s time to sing along together, if you’re unfortunate enough to be working over the festive season.

Image generated by the author using Stable Diffusion

To the tune of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, to be sung loudly and with gusto whilst logged into Jira, marking a random selected ticket as ‘Rejected’ for every verse sung.

Do sing ‘USB’ as quickly as you can, like a triplet only faster, ignoring much of the rules of modern music, naturally.

“Dammit Jim¹, I’m a software engineer not a musical arranger.

On the first day of Christmas my PM gave to me,
a PowerPoint on a USB key.

On the second day of Christmas my PM gave to me,
two story points,
and a PowerPoint on a USB key.

On the third day of Christmas my PM gave to me,
three Gantt charts,
two story points,
and a PowerPoint on a USB key.

On the fourth day of Christmas my PM gave to me,
four interviews,
three Gantt charts,
two story points,
and a PowerPoint on a USB key.

On the fifth day of Christmas my PM gave to me,
five mee-eee-tings,
four bug reports,
three…

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Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX

Worries about the future. Way too involved with software. Likes coffee, maths, and . Would prefer to be in academia. SpaceX, X, and Overwatch fan.