Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

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Waking Holgar
Thursday, December 12, 2002

I had breakfast with Wyatt this morning. He inspires me.

In the upcoming e-commerce project, I have allowed my project manager's fear about developer acceptance of the selected XP practices to infect me. My lack of experience has also given this fear a foothold, telling me that the team won't respect my opinions. Wyatt pushed me to introduce stories, tasks, and iterations as well.

On the train ride after breakfast, I was reading Peopleware and read something that opened my eyes to how this change might be possible:

"Making that single change is a tall order for one person. If you've got second thoughts about throwing yourself into the fray, it's only natural...A single person acting alone is not likely to effect any meaningful change. But there's no need to act alone. When something is terribly out of kilter...it takes very little to raise people's consciousness of it. Then it's no longer just you. It's everyone."

I need to begin now to foster an elite attitude in this team. I need to begin developing meaningful relationships with my teammates. The only way these changes will be implemented is if they trust me, and accept the practices as their own. Or, more to the point, as our own.

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