The pace of change for development teams feels higher than ever, and so XP’s tactics for helping teams embrace change are more helpful than ever.
Teamwork & XP in the era of Genies
Posts By: benji
Overcoming Resistance to Extreme Programming
Developers discount XP based on misconceptions. Managers say they support collaborative working while simultaneously reinforcing incentives that demonstrate the opposite. Let’s explore sources of resistance to XP from developers, management, systems, and tools, along with how to help…if appropriate.
Tragedy of Return to Hostile Offices
Don’t suffer and merely survive, aided by your noise cancelling headphones.
Optimising for individual happiness can result in less of the joy that people find in teams that achieve great things together.
Engineering Team Lessons from Cycling
Cycling provides interesting example for software development. Like software development it’s possible to race individually or in teams. A group that’s an effective team will outperform the same group acting as individuals every time.
One does not simply deliver software
Efficient delivery prevents outsized outcomes—efforts to eliminate wasteful deviations from plans limit teams. At very best they’ll achieve only the outcomes they were able to foresee in advance.
Do you need a Strong Leader?
Helping a team overcome weaknesses requires an appreciation for weakness more than a show of strength. Being the strongest can even be a disadvantage.
If you stopped pouring petrol onto the fires, maybe you would not need such experienced firefighters.
Supporting Sustainability
Many software teams struggle with ever growing cost of change, and technical debt that risks overwhelming them. It’s always interesting to talk with folks and understand, how the system and incentives created this state. Often I hear from software engineers that management doesn’t give them permission for (or doesn’t prioritise) work such as tidying, refactoring,… Read more »
Pondering Agile Principles
I’ve worked in and with teams who would identify as agile for many years. I’ve written about how I think the most interesting part of the agile manifesto is the “uncovering better ways” mindset. With this in mind, I’ve been pondering how the principles in the agile manifesto have aged. Where do (and don’t) I… Read more »
Cost of Attrition
What if we could visualise the cost of attrition? Here’s a team. Someone leaves. We hire a replacement.We get lucky and manage to find someone more skilled. Looks like we’re better off? Really when someone leaves we lose all the relationships they had with the rest of the team as well. The team is a… Read more »
Uncovering Better Ways
How many better ways of working have you uncovered lately? This past year a lot of people have been forced into an unplanned and unwanted experiment. Many teams have had to figure out how to work in a remote-first way for the first time. I was privileged to be working in a team that was… Read more »