Re: Re: Sticking point

Charlie Poole wrote:

[snip]

> Glen Alleman wrote:
> > It seems the sides have traded places from the XP conversation, and the
> > attempts to rest control back to the developer view may be the source of
> > my frustration. It's not the developer view I'm interested in. It's the
> > rollout of Agile in the business domain. Development of code is an
> > artifact of that, the politics and business process improvements where
> > the action is for me.
>
> I think what you call wresting control back to the developer view is a
> combination of two things. To some degree, it may relate to the fact
> that some people just aren't looking at the non-programming side of
> things. But to a great extent, I think it comes from the fear that
> this exercise is driving toward creating something that can be sold
> as XP but really isn't - something like "This old man" being
> appropriated as the barney theme song.
>
> This is a real concern, and I think it's the source of a lot of the
> heat that gets generated, and often directed at the wrong people.

Glen's expressed interest, rolling out Agile in the business domain,
coincides with mine completely and is the reason I formed this group.   I
share Glen's frustration with the discussion here.  Thank you for surfacing
what may be the source, Charlie.  Perhaps if we address this fear
explicitly, this list can get back on-topic.

I will start by saying you are right, IMO, to be afraid.  Be very afraid.
I'd be willing to bet my last dollar that our friends at Rational, now IBM,
are hard at work on exactly that.  They have no interest in selling culture
change.  That's a very hard sale with a very long sales cycle with a very
low probability of success.  They are interested in selling software and
billable hours.  "You can get all the benefits of XP without changing
anything else.  Here's the software you'll need and we have a team that can
do it for you.  We can even do it offshore to save you money!"  Want to bet?

On the other hand, you have nothing, IMO, to fear from the work on this
list.  I, like Glen, am more interested in XP as an enabler of culture
change than I am in XP on its ability to produce better software.  I'm not
saying that producing better software is not important.  I'm saying my
interests are larger than that.  I'm interested in the discovery /
development of a line of reasoning, a set of analogies, a set of examples,
etc., that makes it obvious that IT is / needs to be considered a core
competency of any business in a competitive environment.  I'm interested in
XP as an enabler that makes it easier to transform a large, slow business in
to a large, agile business.  I believe, or at least have hope and a working
hypothesis, that XP practices are germane to the business at large.  That
hypothesis needs data to support it.  I formed this list, in part, to see if
that data, in the form of experiences like Glen's, exists.  I'm convinced it
does.  I'm hopeful that there are others on the list who can contribute
their own experiences, either to support the hypothesis or to show us how it
needs to be modified when applied to the business domain.  We need their
input but will not, IMO, gain their participation unless and until we, as a
group, welcome it.  That, of course, implies that the group accepts the
objective as valid and valuable.

I am not interested in changing XP.  I am interested in discovering what
changes it enables, what changes it requires, in the business domain in
hopes that it will be perceived as something much more valuable than just
another approach to building software.

Has what I've said made any difference re: your concerns about allowing the
discussion here to proceed?

Bill

Bill


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