Thread regarding Target Corp. layoffs

145128, I'm glad to see someone be articulate and not petty/snarky about TTS. BAs and other supposed non-technical etc are valuable, smart assets to team and target, we need them, their knowledge and skill are essential. It has been determined that our head count is too high. We still need many of these people whose good work contributes to making target successful. It's sad and a loss - this is where we find ourselves now.

The skills and functions in the PA|BC|BA|PM role are all still required in an Agile world. If you don't see this, then you don't understand Agile very well. The determination of requirements, producing mockups, and providing direction is now part of a Story with acceptance criteria and collateral. This is fulfilled by the product owner. Your BCs/BAs make fantastic product owners as they know the business well, and have a much better understanding of the technology and it's capabilities. Additionally, some BAs are very technical and have filled the void of technical resources and contractors when they leave. The process orchestrators, meeting facilitators, partner team coordinator, follow-up driver, road block escalation point, and lessons learned leader; is now covered by your Scrum Master role. In addition, many scrum teams are staffed with additional non-developer roles when a team requires it. UI/UX resource, data analyst, etc. Often times there are spike stories driven by BAs for research.

There are too many resources at Target. Period. Reducing the numbers, and reorganizing the skill sets makes complete sense. Saying sets of skills have no value at all shows stupidity . Saying an organization full of only developers would be amazingly successful, and could build the best enterprise level systems is ridiculous.

Where were the boxes? CC, TNC? I was told 3 boxes per person laid off is a safe rule of thumb

Thousands of moving boxes prepared for the big day. Saw it with my own eyes.

Interesting discussion.... Let's just step back for a minute and discuss that TTS is a support organization delivering tools that help a Retailer conduct business in whatever format the Retailer can sell product to the consumer in. The first step is discussing the business problem requiring "the damn thing." The goal isn't building "it." It's supporting the business. It is very clear that the TTS seems to be the tail trying to wag the dog here.

Again, the non technical folks are a manifestation of the technical folks utter failure to manage their own pyramid and support the greater company. Don't blame the "apparent obvious" do a root cause analysis

That's a PA or BA talking :)

I don't really get the tech stuff, but I'm suspicious. These people claim they're Agile, but almost none of them look that nimble. Hypocrites?

Absolutely true, the funny thing about Target is Non-Technical people taking technical decisions. The finest example of the outcome is the data breach that costed Target dearly.

There is a reason companies don't fully outsource... A majority of those in India can only function by following a script and need exact instructions on how to do things. They also seem to have more concern around doing things fast instead of doing this right.

All of tts should be out sourced as the reality is all suck

You don't get it... Non-Technical people making Technical decisions is why we are where we are at right now. We allow people to move around within Target into Technical positions even if they have zero Technical background... Don't see a problem with that?

Even if you removed the non-technical roles and let engineers "build the damn thing" too many times the coding was delayed, poor quality, or didn't even meet the basic requirements. I witnessed this first hand in a variety of roles on both the business and TTS sides. For a long time, poor engineers were not performance managed properly, leading to a huge base of bad code (and fixes upon fixes which made it difficult to keep evolving). Cleaning it up is a big task, and the new teams shouldn't be blamed for more than a decade of mostly junk being created. It's not one specific group (business, non-technical, or technical). It was an overall failure because of the culture. Take some ownership and either move on or more forward.

I don't care what Agile says, if you don't have your requirements straight just building the damn thing is going to result in a boondoggle - is that what you want, to have your time wasted?

You're right that these non-technical people didn't hire themselves... but they still aren't needed. You don't need a BC, a BA, a PM and a BPC to do 3 months of scoping, requirements, etc. JUST LET PEOPLE BUILD THE DAMN THING.