Re: Summing up and moving on (I hope)

On Monday, December 16, 2002, at 4:41:56 PM, Bill Walton wrote:

> Ron Jeffries wrote:


>> On Monday, December 16, 2002, at 2:54:04 PM, Bill Walton wrote:

>>> From what I understand, Kent introduced XP to deal with a situation a great
>>> deal like this, and it worked. He didn't seperate the two groups, he brought
>>> them closer together and introduced a set of simple rules that allowed them
>>> to interact in a much more productive manner. I welcome your thoughts on the
>>> analogy to this list.
>>
>> The XP rules are little rituals that seem to get people on track. Write
>> things on cards. Business people decide business issues, technical people
>> decide technical issues. Concrete tests for everything. Small changes, simple
>> design, continuous improvement.
>>
>> The XP rules are not rules about who can talk to whom, what they can say, or
>> how they can say it. XP trusts that people are of good will, and that coming
>> together, they will sort things out. Often this works.

> It seems to me, not having experienced it of course, that XP places some
> very healthy limits / boundaries on conversations between the business and
> technical sides.  Doesn't XP rule out the business side commenting on the
> validity of estimates?  Doesn't XP rule out the technical side commenting on
> the validity of the business side's assessment of value?  Doesn't ruling
> these things out go a long way toward having to deal with the tone issue
> altogether?  Just asking.

As far as I know, there are no rules, guidelines, or suggestions in XP about
what not to talk about. Here are a couple of examples from real life of just the
kinds of things you ask about above:

----------------
While I was visiting a client, they were doing an Iteration Plan. After the
stories were up on the board, the programmers were estimating how long they
would take:  "1 day, 2 days, 5 days, 2 days, 1 day, 2 days ..."

"Wait, wait, wait," the customer said. "How come that one there is 5??? It's just
like other ones that were much shorter."

"Oh," the programmers replied, "that one also requires us to change the database
and update the GUI."

"Well then," the customer decided, "if it's going to be five days, I don't want
it." She erased it from the board.

-----------------
At another client, they were also doing an Iteration Plan. The team looked at
one of the stories and estimated it at some moderate number. But they realized
that they could do something simpler that might be as good. So they asked the
customer: "This will be six days, but if you didn't need that stuff with sorting
the columns, it would only be two days."

The customer said, "Oh. I thought that would be easy and that it might be
useful. Never mind, just do the two-day thing."
-------------------

In the first case, the customer challenged the estimate, then decided, as is her
responsibility, what should be done.

In the second case, the programmers challenged the story's value. Again, the
customer decided what should be done.

And, of course, I've seen many cases go the other way. I've even seen the
customer challenge an estimate, get an explanation, and reply to the programmers
that their plan wasn't what she needed, and describe an easier implementation.
Upon reflection, the programmers accepted her design idea.

XP doesn't preclude team members discussing ideas on the other side of the line.
By making it clear who gets the final calls, it actually enables those
conversations to occur without fear or other emotional events.

Naturally, this works better and better as the team builds up more and more
mutual trust. That happens, not just because of the practices, but because the
Whole Team practice puts them close together long enough to come to know and
trust each other.

This last is what we keep hoping for here in XC: that some management types will
come in and stick around long enough so that we can get to know each other.
We're hoping for open conversation, not power-oriented conversation. So far, not
many managers have shown up, but I have hope.

Does that help draw the distinction between the rules enabling conversation,
rather than prohibiting certain forms of communication?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.  -- Charles Darwin


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