The article “WORKING IN A WANNABE-AGILE TEAM” points out a common problem in agile: It really exposes you and most people simply are prude.
Unlike many people want to make you believe, they are aware of their own flaws and how much a certain process humiliates them – it’s a skill everyone adopts at an early age, and therefore almost completely subconscious.
Since there is no way to be agile without looking at the team’s issues, the solution is to offer them something else instead.
In my experience, the easiest foot to get into the door is testing. When customers ask for features, ask “How would you know that it’s working correctly? Can you give me an example?” Yay, acceptance tests for free.
People struggling with a piece of code that fails all the time in interesting ways? “How do you know it’s wrong? What would be right? Maybe we could write a piece of code that makes sure it stays right from now on?” Yay, unit testing.
“Can you write a test?” “You can’t test that!” “…. You wrote software that can’t be tested? Seriously?” “… No, of course you could test it but …”
The best part: It focuses on solutions. When suggesting tests, no one can get into the blame game. Everyone can get involved. Customers, managers, developers, everyone understands tests. And they offer the most value for the least investment.
When people have started testing, they become interested in other things as well: Agile planning. Listening to the customer. That’s when you can start to change the culture – you now have some trust that you can spend.
Tagged: Agile, Project Management, Software, Testing
