Quotes

“In XP, valuable employees: Act respectful. Play well with others. Take initiative. Deliver on their commitments.”

“Taiichi Ohno, the spiritual leader of TPS, says the greatest waste is the waste of overproduction. If you make something and can’t sell it, the effort that went into making it is lost. If you make something internally in the line and don’t use it immediately its information value evaporates.”

“The objection I hear to customer involvement is that someone will get exactly the system he wants, but the system won’t be suitable for anyone else. It’s easier to generalize a successful system than to specialize a system that doesn’t solve anyone’s problem.”

“The point of customer involvement is to reduce wasted effort by putting the people with the needs in direct contact with the people who can fill those needs.”

“How much incentive does he have to help others if he will be evaluated on individual performance?”

“Two challenges have been reported for human resources when teams begin applying XP: reviews and hiring. The problem with reviews is that most reviews and raises are based on individual goals and achievements, but XP focuses on team performance.”

“I suggested this strategy to an architect at another company. He complained of spending all of his time writing specifications and then explaining them to developers. He was frustrated that he didn’t have time to code any more. I suggested he write a testing infrastructure and then use tests instead of specifications and explanations. If he saw a hole in a design he should write a failing test to point it out. I wasn’t able to convince him to try the idea, but I still think it’s valuable.”

“When you’re sick, respect yourself and the rest of your team by resting and getting well. Taking care of yourself is the quickest way back to energized work. You also protect the team from losing more productivity because of illness. Coming in sick doesn’t show commitment to work, because when you do you aren’t helping the team.”

“Dictating practices to a team destroys trust and creates resentment. Executives can encourage team responsibility and accountability. Whether the team produces these with XP, a better waterfall, or utter chaos is up to them.”

“With enough caffeine and sugar, I can keep typing long past the point where I have started removing value from the project. It’s easy to remove value from a software project; but when you’re tired, it’s hard to recognize that you’re removing value.”

“Just as values bring purpose to practices, practices bring accountability to values.”

“XP teams strive to generate as much feedback as they can handle as quickly as possible. They try to shorten the feedback cycle to minutes or hours instead of weeks or months. The sooner you know, the sooner you can adapt.”

““It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.””

“Put improvement to work by not waiting for perfection. Find a starting place, get started, and improve from there.”

“Everything in software changes. The requirements change. The design changes. The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn’t change, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is our inability to cope with change.”

“This is the paradigm for XP. Stay aware. Adapt. Change.”

“First develop your skills, then put them into service. Leading by example is a powerful form of leadership.”

“It’s not my job to “manage” someone else’s expectations. It’s their job to manage their own expectations. It’s my job to do my best and to communicate clearly.”

“No matter the circumstance you can always improve. You can always start improving with yourself. You can always start improving today.”