Development hell: A case study

[xkcd]

As you are no doubt aware, the devs over at DCG are still working on delivering Evolution with no end to sight in the development and constant delays, failed deadlines and broken promises, confidence in the team is completely shattered and DCG's approval rating is falling off a cliff once more as wave after wave of no votes rain down on their egregious proposals. Let's back up a bit and ask ourselves if this situation is unique to Dash, or can we find other examples of this in the wild and if we can what lessons can we learn from them and what can we do to help improve the situation?

I have long been fascinated with the story of Titanic https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051994/ and several years ago when I learned that a game was being developed that would faithfully re-create the ship in exquisite detail, well I was immediately smitten with the project. https://www.titanichg.com/

To date the project has been going for 10 years, it has undergone a team change, it has been re-based to several different game engines, most recently from UE4 to UE5, the game has even pivoted from a regular game with NPC of your favourite historic characters from the actual ship to now an empty vessel to walk about on your own. The team have had several successful fund raisings, investments and donations and of course blown through all that money and still not delivered anything (to steam) and only have demos, while impressive, the actual game is still not done and there is no ETA, sound familiar?

Download and play the amazing demo for FREE on your DX12 capable device! https://www.titanichg.com/demo-401

Over in Dash's DCG, we have much the same, a team that has turned over, Andy CTO, Bob CTO, Sam CTO. We have pivoted from just usernames in a block, to whole new sidechain and extensive data contracts, proofs and invented a whole new database. We are nowhere near delivery, we are 10x over budget, we started over at least once, we moved from js to rust all before delivering a single thing to mainnet.

What common issues do these teams have and why are neither team able to deliver shit much to the fury and frustration of the end users?

• Neither team have any managers, both are dev heavy with little to no over sight.
• Both teams love the work they are doing and are perfectionists and simply not satisfied with 'good enough' and will only settle for 'best'.
• Neither project was specified, planned or in anyway scoped at the start to define what was expected to be built, under what constraints and what the outputs would be. This in-determinant scope lead to scope and feature creep and the lack of planning lead to the inability to estimate dates and resource the projects adequately.
• Both teams have poor internal communication, one group of guys agree on one thing and another on another thing and later this creates a problem when the decision is found to be wrong.
• Both teams are disorganised, lacking protocols, procedures and methodology to effectively move the project along with minimal re-work and forgetting certain tasks etc.

There may be even more issues.

Possible solutions.

• Add managerial roles to the team, CEO, new CTO, product owners, Team Leads, Project Manager, Scrum Master. These will help with keeping the devs focused on work, help them better interoperate with others, have a big picture view of the project to help breakaway the silos, cut down on scope creep, enforce procedures, help with non-dev stuff freeing devs to dev.
• Improve comms.
• Document EVERYTHING.
• Make check lists and flow charts for everything, devs will complain vehemently over this one, force them to do this, another issue we have in Dash is the It's all in my head issue, where in order to protect their position, the dev refuses to write down what they know and share knowledge of their specific area. Document it, or get out!.
• Be accountable, managers will ensure that devs are accountable to estimates, doing work and if something slips we go back and find out why and put procedures in place to avoid that, or resolve whatever issue caused the delay from impacting us again. In Dash, I see the same mistakes made over and over again.

In conclusion, neither team is evil or scammers, both teams are well meaning, but way in over their heads and seemingly unable to help themselves. Both teams are ripe for strong leadership and massive overhaul in the way they work in order to truly start collaborating and working more efficiently. Both teams are scared of this and fear changes, though those fears are misplaced since it must be way nicer to have a flock of pleased fans, than a mob of pissed of people who feel shat on and cheated by these teams that appear to have no regard whatsoever for the victims of their folly.

-Xk.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

True, perfectionists stands out the most. But then again, the HPMN solution most definitely tells me the perfectionist part was dropped in a desperate last minute attempt to get something out.

I don't wish for this but I think there is a high possibility of the evo side weakening our reputation on the payment side. For example, when Platform goes down - and it will - all those newbies with usernames will be locked out.

I've often thought of building a service on top of Platform but for the life of me I can't justify it. Sometimes you don't want to be dependent on one platform unless it's functionally so good or has an abundance of support. Honestly, someone telling me the whole thing stands up on 100 nodes doesn't do it for me.

 

[qwizzie]

If you want to compare the development hell of Dash with a game, i rather want to compare it to the game Star Citizen. It is the game with the most crowdfunding tied to it and has been in development since 2011. It looks nowhere near complete after all that time, while crowdfunding continues to this day.

I have some trust in the Core team releasing v.19.0.0 to Dash Mainnet according to the new roadmap, end of this month and their wish to keep Dash Core v20 small in scope.

I have far less trust in the Platform teams releasing Dash Platform RC1 on Testnet in May and releasing on Mainnet in June. And if Dash Platform is not ready for release in June, then that will also trigger a delay on the release of Dash Core v20 from the Core team.

The lack of control of the current CTO of DCG (maybe previous CTO's as well, but those were not an active developer with inner connections like our current CTO without having oversight in the form of a CEO) with regards to the constant Platform delays lately, unwillingness to even refer to the newly updated roadmap and the ETA's mentioned there, is very concerning to me. I think DCG need changes, and perhaps having someone fullfill the CEO postion for DCG again, will help with that. It should be someone from outside the current developers and not a developer that is working on the Dash Core team or the Platform teams currently.

I think that CEO will have to make some tough operational changes for DCG, so that DCG in the future can commit to clear targetdates, communicate those to the Dash community and release according the Dash Roadmap.

 

[xkcd]

I have some trust in the Core team releasing v.19.0.0 to Dash Mainnet according to the new roadmap, end of this month and their wish to keep Dash Core v20 small in scope.

So do I, it's the platform team that seem to be going backwards.

 

[kot]

@xkcd

Shit... I guess this is the first time in the history of this forum when I agree with what you wrote entirely. I am going to open a bottle of wine and celebrate

However... I would like to add something to that. And it is not pleasant for me to write this.
In my opinion, there is a huge problem with culture - inside DCG and community. And this is the most urgent problem to address.

We have created and accustomed to a culture of not delivering and having no consequences.
There is a problem inside DCG of constantly not delivering, breaking promises or having no accountability for promises. And there is a problem within the community of looking for the scapegoats everywhere but not where the problem really exist.
And this is bad. And the problem exists on many levels. I'll just scratch the surface here but I am happy to discuss deeper, if anyone is interested.

In my opinion, currently the biggest problem is with the developers, who are almost worshiped and constatntly shielded by the community, but not held accountable to what they promise and (not)deliver. There was always easier to blame managers, tools, processes or whatever else.

As you have noticed, the managers were changed (multiple CTOs, CEO, board), supporting functions were changed, tools were changed (eg. recently new tool implemented by Patrick), processes were changed. ...And still there is no desired results of delivery on time, as promised and according to expectations. There are excuses and rationalizations instead.
What wasn't changed then? Yeah... the developers. With some minor changes, in the center of the development process these are the same people since years. The same developers, who provide inaccurate estimates to their managers, who promise to finish on time but they never do (or hardly ever), who use new tools and processes. And it looks like they feel pretty comfortable with the situation, because they were made "untouchable".
You can change everything around the developers, but if you don't change them and/or corrupted culture of not delivering on promises (and without consequences) you will ultimately always fail.

Another (big) story is naive claim that developers are always right and they know what they are doing. As a result the project is repeatedly focused on tech, not on customer/user. But in the reality I know, this is the customer (or user) who is ALWAYS right - not developer and not technology.
This is a different story - not necessarily for this topic. Just a food for thoughts.

 

[xkcd]

Shit... I guess this is the first time in the history of this forum when I agree with what you wrote entirely. I am going to open a bottle of wine and celebrate

haha, didn't you like my guides!

We have created and accustomed to a culture of not delivering and having no consequences.

Exactly, the MNOs basically fund every proposal from DCG so what message are they sending them? The only real message they send is through the price (by cashing out) and disturbingly, I've heard from some DCG members support for increasing the DAO's budget to 20% ! The point I was making above was that devs need to be focused and directly into effective work with a support team around them and this is how it is done in every commercial company I have worked in. I know that at a time we did have many of those roles, but I am sorry as nice of a guy Ryan was he failed you on many occasions, I can even give examples, and that doesn't mean we tried and failed at righting this listing ship, it just means the wrong captain was at the helm. Again, while some people may not like it, look at Musk's iron fist approach to Twitter upon taking it over and his radical transparency to build trust with the users. I hate to say it, but we need a Musk in DCG to blow the doors open on it, share everything with the world and get us back on track with smoother deliveries.

Though I like Patrick, I don't think he was right for the job. At least initially, this task (CEO replacement) will take all the individuals time as they figure out what the hell is going on, meet with all employees, communicate with the world and come up with a plan to make corrections. This person will likely become hated by everyone, perhaps even the community due to perceived loss on investment (though I believe this fear would be misplaced). This person would have to be willing to risk their own investment tanking at least in the short term before results become clear, but the rewards for getting it right are restored trust in DCG, a sausage machine that works smoothly, huge upside potential in price as the market sees the changes and re-prices this asset accordingly.

 

[vampyren]

Since i'm working as a product manager today i totally understand this message and stand behind what your saying here!
I often get amazed how much time and money is wasted due to bad planning, lack of communication, lack of commitment etc etc.
As you know i been around for a while and i see teams with much much less budget achieve far more than Dash so its not impossible to achieve more with less.

And since i love the project i can also say i am willing to help if we are open for change.

 

[kot]

@xkcd I am not sure what is it about the sausage machine but I agree with the necessity of having the iron fist on board.

PS. If comes to the transparency - you have it since a long time, you just don't like what is being presented imho. DCG was not keeping anything behind closed doors, except highly confidential information (as Elon also does). There was simply nothing more to present (which was uncomfortable and disappointing)

 

[vazaki3]

Bullshit! Empty words without meaning.

Just vote the numbers, idiots!


JUST LET THE DAO DECIDE "HOW MUCH"!!!!!!

DONT YOU SEE A REAL BIG PROBLEM WHEN THE DAO CANNOT DECIDE "HOW MUCH"?????

"The opportunities for this system to be applied are really countless, and the world would be a very different place if we, as a society and as a civilisation, really have understood this modus operandi and applied it anywhere it could be applied. Many Dao has an enormous number of quantitative decisions to take.

How long should this work last?
How much should we invest in this company?
How much should we pay for this job?
This Dao is offering a service, how much should it ask to be paid?
How many people should be in this team?
How long before new elections should be held?
How many times a person can be elected for a specific role?
and so on"