Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

This one comes from Keith Braithwaite of WDS Global and Steve Freeman of ThoughtWorks UK.

We are going to

• Seed some stories
• Break into groups and share stories
• Each group to discuss their stories and extract 3 anti-patterns
• Each group will present their anti-patterns
• Pick top 3, discuss

Dissenters should be tolerated as long as possible, but no longer:

• Some people take time to convert, give them time
• One "Professional Skeptic" can bring everything to a halt
• Special treatment for the squeaky wheel can cause resentment amongst the rest - possible on a non-XP team, virtually impossible on one

Proxy customers must remember their place

• Very few people saying they are doing XP are - most have a proxy customer, not a real one (Product Manager?)
• Knowing the solution domain well does not imply knowing the business domain well
• Having a proxy available when the real customer is not available can help
• Can blow up if they forget that they are not, in fact, the customer - end product will then answer the wrong question(s)

Must be prepared to pay the cost of fixing the mess

• Decent engineering is expensive to retro-fit
• Customers will not see any progress from this - they will start to think you are "wasting time". Unclear how to do this well. Only real solution is constant checking, or deal with catostrophes as they occur
• Probably won't like the extra discipline... they don't feel the pain

You need to be doing other good stuff beyond XP. There's not a lot to XP - it's light. What's not part of XP that is necessary?

• Small design up front doesn't hurt, and will definitely help. Not BDUF....
• Many people do not absorb the rigor required - especially if they have only "read the books" and not discussed it
• Version control - surprising number of teams don't
• Test/Code/Refactor is necessary but not sufficient. Have to have skill, it's not a silver bullet. There are process/interpersonal issues as well. You can run down refactoring rabbit holes, for instance....

Don't frighten the customer

• Most orgs adopting XP have other, non-XP projects. Don't be a full-time evangelist
• Over emphasizing it can be dangerous, and get you labelled as a "religious fanatic"

Stand up to the Customer

• Customers drive the project
• Doesn't mean they are always right or know what they always want
• Developers can be frightened of customer, and not question them, even when they "know" they are wrong
• This can end up delivering the wrong solution to the wrong problem

Step up to the customer role

• The "Real" customer is unavailable
• lack of feedback and direction increases risk - recall the "remember your place" in the proxy customer role
• Someone in that role is better than no one...

The exercise - come up with a few anti-patterns and proposed solutions. We came up with:

Create a Customer

• There is no customer
• Without a customer, rat holes abound
• Some projects - such as vendor products - lack a single definable customer

Get a new Bo peep

• Need a working team
• Coach leaves
• Lost Sheep after coach leaves

Hire experienced people

• The blind leading the blind
• They fall off the clock
• There's no substitute for an experienced coach

Other examples

Timely shutdown

• No customer - shut down the project (don't let marketing run wild
• Seeing the Forest and the trees - Lots of apparent chaos - step back, find the ball
• Right Rewards - Align incentives and development goals with reality and actual business goals

Personal Space

• 24 hour pair programming
• Not accomodating the individual
• Cabin fever - learning needs

Single Voice

• You have multiple customers
• You cannot serve two masters

Escape from refactoring

• Refactoring paralysis
• Stalled/No progress
• "The perfect is the enemy of the good enough"

Quarantine

• Small XP team in large company experiencing growth
• XP Team absorbed back into "mainstream" - XP practices lost
• Protect the team, keep it separate

Others I didn't quite get down - "Stealth XP" and "Explicit XP"

So we have a vote to determine the top three:

• Timely shutdown
• Personal Space
• See forest and trees

The voting results came back differently than at the Benelux conference - they all came back with issues surrounding customer relations, whereas we came back with technologist/team issues. Likely because this group is a technologist, but not necessarily doing XP. The Benelux conference was an explicitly XP Conference.