I remember sitting in a room full of IT professionals listening to an acomplished agile developer start a presentation. He authored his own book and worked for a well known consulting firm that were well known for following an agile methodology on their projects. Bright fellow. He was barely into his talk when he said ”I’m going to take your sacred cows and kill them in front of you, grind them up into hamburger and feed them to you.”
Hmmmm. I remember thinking “That’s a bad way to start a presentation.” Everyone was against him at that point. Except me.
I thought that was a rather militant way to open a presentation, but I wanted to hear some of what he was saying. I was using a methodology very close to what he was explaining. However, when I would chime in with comments on how my teams were applying the same techniques he would showcase me to the rest of the audience and was basically saying “why can’t you be more like Ben?”
Ugh. I didn’t know if I wanted to appear to be taking sides with this guy. Sure everyone has opportunities to improve the way they do things, but insulting them is not the right way to sway them.
Recently I viewed a talk on Agile Testing, got from a series of videos reviewed over at Rise Again, where Elisabeth Hendrickson recounted hearing Kent Beck, the Father of eXtreme Programming, say “‘QA people are a throwback to Tayloristic, scientific, time and motion management…and that [they] are all irrelevant in the brave new world of eXtreme Programming’…he said this to a standing room only audience of quality assurance professionals.”
Now I may be going out on limb here, but I’m guessing that neither Kent Beck or the consultant that shall remain nameless have read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
The one thing that you don’t want to do when you are trying to persuade someone to your point of view is to put them on the defensive at the very start. These two very smart individuals threw away their audiences from the very beginning. That’s not too bright. From other anecdotes I’ve heard have similar stories.
I’ve read Kent’s book and it’s phenominal. If you haven’t read it you should. If you aren’t applying at least some of XP methodologies you need to. These men and women have a lot of valuable techniques that can and should be used. Even if it is in spite of the the fire-and-brimestone arguments made by some evangelists.
