Keeping the fight. :)

The addition of ‘humility’ to the team’s core values was inspired by the earlier writings of Scott Ambler as he was developing the concept of Agile Modeling (see Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for Extreme Programming and the Unified Process – Ambler). We thought that humility was a key (and often missing) element in the typical approaches toward team development and threw it in once discovered.

Bellware and I were first trying to help the World Savings team we worked with (and that you work with now) move from a disfuntional water fall-based process to an agile approach (namely XP). I think that we both lacked humility (and respect for that matter) at first when trying to sell the idea, largely due to our frustration with heavy resistance from team members on both development and business sides. Had humility and respect been among our watchwords during the process things may have (may have I stress) gone a bit smoother.

At the time of the addition of ‘humility’ to our XP-base core values, the XP core values were (initiated circa 1999):
1. Communication
2. Simplicity
3. Feedback
4. Courage

Over time, I think that the concept of humility has become integral to the team and part of its very culture. I was quite impressed when seeing you guys work recently; the business and developers where playing quite well together and productivity was such that Wachovia has been forced to take notice in the post-merger environment.

As I saw on the link you provided, ‘Respect’ has now been added to the list of XP core values. ‘Respect’ and ‘Humility’ are not synonyms, but do seem to have a bit of mutual interdependence. Without either, it’s quite difficult to develop a cohesive team. Agile development approaches, like many sports, rely heavily on team cohesion and good ‘sportsmanship’ among the team’s players in order for teams to ‘win’.

Finally, we did have Feathers come and he was helpful and inspirational (I want to be like him when I grow up…if I grow up). He helped mainly with TDD in C# and introduced us to Fitnesse (this focused on the Simplicity and Feedback values). The team building part, unfortunately, we had to figure out on our own.

We brought our own Courage, figured out (through much trial and error) how to improve Communication and Feedback in a way that worked for us, and along the way learned just how important Humility is along the way in helping assure the first four values.

Keep up the good fight team Wachovia!

Managers manage — A coach leads!

Nice post.