I try to keep up with all of the various agile “Yahoo! Group” lists: extremeprogramming, scrumdevelopment, refactoring, testdrivendevelopment, agile-testing, and so on. I post once in a while when I see a topic I feel qualified to respond to or that I’m passionate about. Lately I’ve been getting a lot less value out of these lists, some of which I’ve been following for ten years.
Many of the lists degrade into passionate statements of position, i.e. advocacy. Inevitably, people get burnt. Tempers flare, people get upset, some stomp their feet, some simply withdraw. I myself have gotten burnt on this same list, feeling that someone (probably not coincidentally, the same person who is withdrawing now) was looking to simply piece apart every single word written to find as much fault as possible with it.
I withdrew completely from that discussion. I’ve also withdrawn from perhaps a couple other difficult discussions (out of the hundreds I’ve engaged in over the years). Sometimes it’s because I felt the environment was too hostile, and I justified it to myself by thinking that the individuals involved were being immature or offensive or whatever. But that’s not courage speaking. I looked back at my most recent example and regretted how I handled it. Withdrawing didn’t solve anything.
Sometimes a simple statement, meant to be innocuous by who wrote it, is taken as a stab and affront. We can pout and take our toys and go home, but that’s not at all useful or commendable. Courage can help us find a way to face the challenge and learn how to get past the issue. We don’t have to agree with everyone or get along with them, but sometimes a sour incident can lead to a valuable relationship.
So how is this at all relevant to anything? Well, if we are to succeed, agile software development requires that we face challenges and not bury them in isolated cubes. Similar clashes occur not only on email lists, but in real life, and we’re particularly going to see such clashes more frequently in highly collaborative teams. Conflicts that are not handled properly will detract from a team’s ability to deliver. The XP value of courage is still essential to learning how to regularly deliver quality software.
Comments
George Dinwiddie April 4, 2009 at 11:31am
Jeff, it is sad when these lists become battlegrounds, or contests to show who is smarter or more right.
Both of the primary participants in this latest brou-ha-ha are friends of mine. They are both extraordinarily intelligent. They are both very quick witted. Given that they are starting from different assumptions and different vocabularies, quickness and intelligence don’t seem to be beneficial–particularly in an online discussion.
I would love to get them sitting down and talking in person. I think, though, that there are now enough bad feelings in both directions that this will never happen. It’s a pity. Not only do both of them miss out on something potentially very valuable, but so does the entire community.
