RE: Summing up and moving on (I hope)

Hi, Bill,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Walton [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 4:42 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [XC] Summing up and moving on (I hope)
>
<snip>
>
> 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.

I don't see any of the XP practices placing limits on "conversations between the business
and technical sides."


>Doesn't XP rule out the business side commenting on the
> validity of estimates?

Not as far as I know.  Certainly I wouldn't be the least bit bothered if the Customer
asked me why I rate one story as a two and another as a one.  What the XP practices say
is that the Customer doesn't *set* the estimate.

In your years in development, didn't "the business side" ever try to set your estimates?
Didn't you, as a programmer, or a tester, or any of the technical jobs you've had, know
you could do something in a particular time, and have some one above you say they wanted
it earlier?

I know I have. Sometimes it's even worse, I'm not asked how long *I* think it will
take... but the team lead (another programmer) says something like "I could do it in a
day, so it'll take Kay 4 days."  This seems really cool the first few times it happens...
but when it continues, then I not only start *looking* like one quarter of the team lead,
but I start feeling that way.  I never (on that contract) learn to make estimates, and I
never get faith in how long something will take me.

That's the kind of "conversation" that XP avoids.  And it doesn't "prohibit" it... it
just puts the estimates within my control.

Bill, that's going to be something that's hard for me to overcome.  And the programmers
that happens to are exactly the programmers who *want* strongly to deliver the best
possible product.  The programmers who really *want* the users, the customers to get what
they want.





>Doesn't XP rule out the technical side commenting on
> the validity of the business side's assessment of value?

No, I don't think so.  I'm not going to comment on *validity*... but I may want input.


Here's another example.  I've always been the one on the team who did NOT refer to
customers/users as "losers."  I like working with the people who are going to use the
software.  I like giving them what they want... otherwise I'd just program for myself.

And sometimes customers ask for the impossible.  They want to *drive* from Washington, DC
to Paris, France.  And I need to educate them that cars don't float... and give them
other options.  And sometimes what they think they want "a combo box" is not what they
really want: "to be able to pick a state."  So we have "conversations."  But I still
don't make the *decision* as to what they want.  They make that decision.

In the process, I learn more about the customers, and they learn more about what I do.

>  Doesn't ruling
> these things out go a long way toward having to deal with the tone issue
> altogether?  Just asking.

When people have real respect for each other, "tone" doesn't divide them.  Without real
respect, one has to carefully watch their "tone" as well as the words they use.  It's a
lot easier to just have real respect.

Respectfully,

Kay
>


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