Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The XP Coaching Paradox

As a team new to XP, I want for you to coach my team, so that we can deliver valuable features to our customers.
Great, now that I know what our goal is, lets get down to business! However its just not that simple because people are afraid to embrace change for a myriad of reasons. The mistake I regularly make is reacting when I loose my patience or when someone says something that runs contrary to pure XP. The dogmatist in me converts anger into logic and I refuse to stop arguing until I am able to make them look foolish.
Although Emperor Palpatine would encourage you to "release your anger" that behavior is simply unbecoming of a Jedi and is just not the right thing to do! It hurts peoples feelings and brings down the teams morale.
Today was a great step forward in my life as a professional coach. I did not allow my emotions to get in the way of what I was doing. I listened to what my customers where saying without prejudice and reserved my comments when I heard someone say that testing was a waste of time.
As a coach you have to let people make mistakes. Its all part of the game.

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