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my boss some months ago: so there is this new project, and we're planning to slowly fade in and gradually increase the time you guys work on this project

new pm last week: welcome to the project, you're now 100% allocated to the new project, that's your highest prio now
me: ...what about the other projects? they might have questions xD
pm: don't worry about that, dealing with that is not your job

my boss this week: yeah no, the other releases are most important for our company. the new project needs to be subordinated and has lower prio, at least lower prio than critical and highly prioritized bugs.
me: so.... who decides which items from which projects i shall prioritize higher than the new project and how much time i shall spend on them?
my boss: it is your job to talk to people, give them estimates and tell them how many items you can work on, so they can decide which items they pick

so basically i'm having the feeling that i need to manage myself here. it will be fun to attend the new project daily standups and tell the new pm all the time that i couldn't do anything because i had no time. anyone else with this experience? is this normal? actually i liked our new pm's attitude "dealing with that is not your job". i should have known it was too good to be true ^^'

Comments
  • 7
    This is where scrum, with a real, dedicated scrum master, can be useful. Unfortunately real, dedicated scrum masters are rarer than hen's teeth
  • 6
    @nibor yup, a good scrum master, heck, good team lead/manager, should be the go between for this kind of politics.
  • 0
    @nibor we are using scrum in the new project, but not in the other projects and especially not spanning multiple projects. this would be great for us devs, but this will never happen in our company ^^' it's more like a matrix organization..
  • 2
    @soull00t the thing is, with scrum all your time should be managed through the scrum process even if some of the projects are not.

    Or they need to give a clear time limit that scrum owns.

    Anything else is just going to be messy, and no, it should not be your job to decide which things to prioritize, you most likely do not have enough info for that.

    Sure, estimates and telling how much you can squeeze in is your part, but not the picking and choosing, unless its all in a free for all backlog you can choose from.
  • 3
    Choose a random ticket, and work on it. When they ask you "who told you to work on that" - just say the other guy approved it. PM and manager have to talk to each other at that point. Or not. If they don't - then you can do whatever you want. If they do, then the ticket priority will get sorted, and the New PM will get a kick to the face.
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