MELBOURNE – During the penultimate sprint of the massive data relocation project, the working party at PingusCorp has reached the final stage of incompetency: by blaming everyone else.
The project seemed simple enough: take the existing legacy framework with terabytes of unaudited raw data in no logical format, export it to an agnostic platform and rebuild it in an enterprise-friendly SaaS CRM that’s definitely not Salesforce. All with a limited budget, three external contractors (including two in different timezones and who refuse to turn their cameras on during morning standups), and no Scrum Master to keep things moving.
What could possibly go wrong?
After the project kicked off there was no communication for three weeks, when a team member asked in the Teams channel if anyone had an update. The Scrum Master replied they thought that the Information Architect was working on updates, but then realised they weren’t on the comms list.
It was in week 10 of the 12-week project that the team really started panicking; when the Regional Director asked for a status report and no one had any idea of the scale or urgency or scope of the project. It was then that the fingers began pointing at each other.
The project concluded at three times the estimate and four times longer than expected. The Scrum Master was promoted to Senior Tech Lead and now manages a team of 36.