As I have spent (too) many years living in such a system, let me explain what I've observed in practice.
First of all there would be, in principle, differences per culture but it will level down when troubles strike -- then it is universally everyone for himself. The only difference being how big the trouble must be for this to trigger.
Generic problems observed in practice:
- ownership by everyone means in practice ownership by no one as proven every single day by comparing the same business run by a state or a city or privately -- it is always worse and more expensive
- maybe it is strictly separate subject but in socialism somehow people are expected to be equal; since this is obviously a wrong assumption people will be forced to be equal which is never pleasant for the "better" onces (whatever that means); economically it will include taking from richer and giving to poorer (again, regardless whether these differences would be labeled fair or not and whether the reacher earned it by working hard or the poorer was just lazy)
So, unless your culture isn't aready "trained" in putting the good of the group above individual and, believe me, US population is not, socialsim will not work for you on a long run.
P.S. I wouldn't write this if this article wasn't so painfully stupid -- I'm not calling the author stupid, only this idealistic view. Socialism is NOT about dishing the same stuff to everyone like a storm or a disease. It is a much more complex system that is incompatible with human beings. Maybe permanently, maybe just not right now. It is not wrong, it is not bad on its own. It just doesn't work today for most of us. In addition any stystem that attaches an adjective to the word "justice" -- as in "social justice" -- needs a very, very careful investigation. At least.
Well, even if Ben is right the title should be amended with "... from Harvard or Stanford". The other problem (even bigger) with MBA is one can get it from really obscure universities.
Speaking as someone with an MBA from a non-Ivy League, I got a second Masters to help differentiate myself from the 10s of 1,000s of MBAs with no tanigble skills or benefits to offer companies.
I think I also learned more in the Masters in Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies than in the MBA. The teachers in that program were far more versed having worked or started several startups each.
He is doing his own Arduino form factor and I guess is he doesn't need a sponsor but maybe you two will have an interesting conversation anyway :) BTW: JCW is supporting a super-cheap radio on his platform you might be interested in :)
From what I have witnessed over the years your feeling could be caused by really various factors. If you want some advice from the crowd here you probably need to provide some more details - at least about your professional situation e.g. big company or small? good management or not? good team or not? interesting project or not?
The optimistic scenario is: maybe you got bored with your current job? Some people just need changes.
50 or so employees. We're a digital agency. My team is great and so are the rest of my co-workers. Management is a joke. The projects are fun - however, that's the problem. We're rarely working on projects. We're usually fixing bugs in this horrible codebase we have or tacking on features onto the horrible code. I'd say in the whole organisation there are only 2 people, plus myself, who actually care about writing good code.
I'm not sure if we can find them reliably but we can reliably identify them: you need an engineer (better: a system architect) tinted with things like "usability", "UX design" and similar. He or she will be technical enough to drive the development team as a PO and have enough social skills to extract information from the client. A consultant will be fine -- maybe even better than a person from within the client's org.
While I appreciate the insight I cannot fully agree with your conlusions. I've been a PO for the last 16 months (not my first scrum project) in a research project where it is simply impossible to have a long backlog. I bearly manage to keep one iteration ahead of the team. But it works. I think it does because I'm the person actively driving the development, I know the direction we should go and I do want the results
And that latter part is where, in my opinion, lies the difference. Not in the artifact but in the person.
In my opinion, anything on a product backlog which exceeds a 2-3 iteration horizon should be spun into a product roadmap document instead - as a general rule of thumb, if you don't have enough information about a story to sit down and write a clear set of acceptance criteria for it right now, it probably doesn't belong in your product backlog.
2-3 iterations is doable - trying to maintain a backlog of stories 2-3 releases ahead usually results in a big sloppy mess of a backlog.
Unfortunately, I've worked with many clients where thinking about priorities in the future far enough to have 2-3 days worth of stories in place beyond the current iteration is a struggle. This is where things usually go really off the tracks, because you build the thing it's easiest to describe right now to keep everyone working, or run from externally-directed fire to fire, instead of setting a cadence of development which represents the business' true near-term priority mix.
On big backlog: you have surprised me here. My backlog has all kinds of stuff in it that I'm not even sure we will ever build (as I said before it is a research project). As long these vague stories are more than 2 iterations away they don't distract the team but, at the same time, show them roughly what I am considering in the long term. I personally find it very important that the team knows the big picture and where and why we are heading so they can take more informed decisions. As a bonus once in a while I get unexpected insights from the team. They are smart guys, after all :)
Regarding the client involvement, what you describe is, in my eyes, not your problem but your clients' - they clearly have no idea what they want to have. If the project is important for the client I sometimes add one more (senior) person to the project from our side and charge him with the task of helping the client to figure out their needs. This new person takes over the PO role on the team side but spends most of his time with the client asking questions, guiding him etc.
First of all there would be, in principle, differences per culture but it will level down when troubles strike -- then it is universally everyone for himself. The only difference being how big the trouble must be for this to trigger.
Generic problems observed in practice:
- ownership by everyone means in practice ownership by no one as proven every single day by comparing the same business run by a state or a city or privately -- it is always worse and more expensive
- maybe it is strictly separate subject but in socialism somehow people are expected to be equal; since this is obviously a wrong assumption people will be forced to be equal which is never pleasant for the "better" onces (whatever that means); economically it will include taking from richer and giving to poorer (again, regardless whether these differences would be labeled fair or not and whether the reacher earned it by working hard or the poorer was just lazy)
So, unless your culture isn't aready "trained" in putting the good of the group above individual and, believe me, US population is not, socialsim will not work for you on a long run.
P.S. I wouldn't write this if this article wasn't so painfully stupid -- I'm not calling the author stupid, only this idealistic view. Socialism is NOT about dishing the same stuff to everyone like a storm or a disease. It is a much more complex system that is incompatible with human beings. Maybe permanently, maybe just not right now. It is not wrong, it is not bad on its own. It just doesn't work today for most of us. In addition any stystem that attaches an adjective to the word "justice" -- as in "social justice" -- needs a very, very careful investigation. At least.