Roundup: Story points, Bots & AI, github improvements
Murray Steele
Nov. 9, 2018
What are story points for? - Murray S
https://robots.thoughtbot.com/the-real-story-behind-story-points
I have to confess that I'm not entirely sure I think story points are a useful tool. I've been in plenty of planning sessions where someone reasonably asks "what is a story point" and is given the answer "they don't measure time or effort, they measure complexity". A long discussion usually ensues because really what people want to know is when will something be done but they're being told that the metrics we track don't measure that. The failing here is strict adherence to a story point dogma which is about as un-agile as you can get. I wouldn't want to go back to "I guess this'll take 2 weeks" style estimation and gantt charts, but neither do I think "it's a measure of complexity that doesn't equate to time" is useful. The article I've linked to above explores some of the things we use story points for, and what alternatives we might be able to use instead, including options for keeping story points, but being more flexible about how you use them.
How I created a bot that talked to recruiters for me - Elena T
https://dev.to/whokilledkevin/how-i-created-a-bot-that-talked-to-recruiters-for-me-54n5
I'll be honest, I've fantasized about writing something like this myself.
Github now allows you to delete issues - Elena T
https://hub.packtpub.com/github-now-allows-repository-owners-to-delete-an-issue-curse-or-a-boon/
Github has made it possible to delete issues which has proven to be a controversial move. On the one hand, it doesn't help preserve the history of a project. On the other hand, it means we can now get rid of issues like Rails' 'Bender from the future' issue: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/5239. Or this one from VS Code: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/32405.
Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning - Elena T
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/opinion/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning.html
An argument for why A.I. predictions severely underestimate replication of human intelligence and why future A.I. might be potato quality.
Track of the Week - Boris D
I’m going to see Leon Bridges live in a week, so I thought this would be a perfect tune for this Friday.