I have had the privilege of observing and participating in the agile software community for ten years, and in that time have witnessed much success, much failure, much consternation and much confusion. I will take a random walk through the Extreme decade, during which the community has pushed the limits of what it means to do less and achieve more.
I won’t try to answer the question of whether we’ve advanced the start of the art, but I’ll share with you what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, what I’d like to see next, and perhaps how you can make your mark. I hope that you’ll leave with tougher questions than you had when you came in.
36. Promiscuous Pairing and Beginner’s Mind:
Embrace Inexperience
Arlo Belshee
Architect
Silver Platter Software
Pasadena, CA 91103
(503) 265-1263
a_xp@arlim.org
the paramount concerns. Performance was second, and
Abstract features were a distant third.
The company was a startup, so we were tight on both
Many traditional software practices stress the cash and time. The company was typically operating with
importance of programming in Flow. XP directly between -30 and 180 Days ‘Till Broke. Our contracts all
challenges the assertion that Flow is critical and had lead times of 3-5 years. This meant that sales had to
proclaims Pair Flow. start at the same time as engineering. Thus, engineering
Both Flow states are fragile. They are easily disrupted had to produce many sales demos and to frequently alter
by outside distraction or task rotation. Both take a long the product to more closely fit the needs of a particular
time to enter. Furthermore, it takes days for a given pair customer.
to be comfortable enough with each other to be able to Due to these influences, we chose a software process
achieve Pair Flow at all. with rapid feedback and change. We ran the shortest
My team at Silver Platter discovered that there is a third iterations we could (1 week) to get the most data possible.
option to achieve high-efficiency programming. Our team We tracked our metrics closely, and we ran several
spent the majority of its time in Beginner’s Mind. experiments each iteration. We used the metrics to decide
Whereas Flow depends on stability, Beginner’s Mind what worked and to what degree. We then adopted those
depends on instability, yet provides similar efficiency things that worked and started the next set of experiments.
gains to a constant state of Flow. Chief among these experiments were variations on
37. Promiscuous Pairing and Beginner’s Mind:
Embrace Inexperience
Arlo Belshee
Architect
Silver Platter Software
Pasadena, CA 91103
(503) 265-1263
a_xp@arlim.org
the paramount concerns. Performance was second, and
Abstract features were a distant third.
The company was a startup, so we were tight on both
Many traditional software practices stress the cash and time. The company was typically operating with
importance of programming in Flow. XP directly between -30 and 180 Days ‘Till Broke. Our contracts all
challenges the assertion that Flow is critical and had lead times of 3-5 years. This meant that sales had to
proclaims Pair Flow. start at the same time as engineering. Thus, engineering
Both Flow states are fragile. They are easily disrupted had to produce many sales demos and to frequently alter
by outside distraction or task rotation. Both take a long the product to more closely fit the needs of a particular
time to enter. Furthermore, it takes days for a given pair customer.
to be comfortable enough with each other to be able to Due to these influences, we chose a software process
achieve Pair Flow at all. with rapid feedback and change. We ran the shortest
My team at Silver Platter discovered that there is a third iterations we could (1 week) to get the most data possible.
option to achieve high-efficiency programming. Our team We tracked our metrics closely, and we ran several
spent the majority of its time in Beginner’s Mind. experiments each iteration. We used the metrics to decide
Whereas Flow depends on stability, Beginner’s Mind what worked and to what degree. We then adopted those
depends on instability, yet provides similar efficiency things that worked and started the next set of experiments.
gains to a constant state of Flow. Chief among these experiments were variations on
