(Or is agile just another way of hiding it away?)
Imagine the following scenario
Fred is a senior developer. The team is doing Scrum for about 10 sprints now, and the ceremonies are kind-of getting into a routine. The team is committing for work to do, and delivering more-or-less what they promised. And yet, Fred is not a happy chappy.
The team is coming to their third release, and there are talks that regression period must be on time, on track this time.
In his frustration, Fred talks to his Scrum Master, expressing his concern that developers must do regression testing yet again in the upcoming regression period. Clearly developers should do coding, and testers should do testing.
Joe, the Scrum Master reminds Fred that regression is for the entire team, not just for testers, and that they are all in the same boat, and that by coding away during regression they are merely adding more technical debt to an already potentially unstable release.
Fred walks back to his desk, muttering “right; and my testing skills are so good, that all bugs will be uncovered. Such a good tester I am”.
What just happened here?
What are Fred and Joe really talking about? What aren’t they talking about?
Given the conversation of these two individuals, what can we say about the atmosphere in this team?
Teams, Organizations and Lions
There is a lion lurking here.
A normal person reaction to seeing a lion would be: increased alertness, increased heart rate and increased perspiration – the automatic physical reaction required for survival in face of danger. This is vital for survival, yet not a pleasant experience.
Therefore, a normal person, having the knowledge that a lion is lurking would act to avoid being seen by the lion: Acting cautiously, refraining from conspicuous and sudden gestures.
Photo by cheetah100 source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/devcentre/327960789/
Let’s relate this back Fred and Joe. Fred might be trying to say: I’m a damn good programmer, and by doing testing, I will be exposing my weaknesses. This is something I am not prepared to do!
Joe, on the other hand, is hiding behind Scrum (teamwork, technical debt) in order to avoid Fred’s issues. He is using Scrum as a defense mechanism against dealing with what Fred has to say.
The thought of confronting these covert issues provokes anxiety. As if Joe is telling himself: I am afraid that if I talk to Fred directly about his subjective experience of being a tester, it may feel as if a lion is about to attack me. I am not prepared to handle such an experience.
Of course, both Fred and Joe don’t necessarily articulate these thoughts to themselves. This, in itself, is too frightening. So they both unconsciously use their survival mechanism not to wake the lion lurking in the grass:
Fred resolves to focus on developing new stuff; Joe is using Scrum to get Fred to do testing, as he thinks the entire team also should.
Dealing with Lions
Is Scrum to blame here? Is Scrum in particular, and Agile in general doomed to fail in such situations like all other organizational methodologies?
I think not. Read more…
Becoming agile 