This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.

<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVqISU5M5ow

#XP #Sociotechnical #OpenSystems

1. Become Director of Engineering

2. Tell org and stakeholders that XP will fix longstanding problems

3. Regularly interfere with devs’ learning

4. Design projects to delay ROI

5. Find scapegoats

Maybe they’ll blame #XP.

If you do this while claiming to be an #XP expert, that’s clownshoes.

#XP #XPLives #ExtremeProgramming