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Is collaboration really so difficult?

In episode 79 of Dave Saboe’s excellent podcast series, “Mastering Business Analysis,” Dave interviews Paula Bell about effective collaboration. Here’s the link: http://masteringbusinessanalysis.com/mba079-effective-collaboration/

One point in particular stood out for me in this episode: “It can be challenging to collaborate under the pressure of deadlines. It’s worth taking the time to get to know one another and to some team building.”

It reminded me of situations that were common in the 1980s in corporate IT work: The “sweatshop” environment, in which working life comprised an unending series of death marches punctuated by physical/mental/emotional crashes.

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Komm süße Todesmarsch

People who’ve been in the IT field for some years tell tales of the bad old days when every project ended in a Death March. Well, actually, no one died. Truth be told, no one marched, either. But we called it a Death March. Some call it the Death March Antipattern. It was, in fact, one of the reasons people became interested in exploring alternative approaches to software development.

Younger professionals have managed to avoid the Death March Antipattern, for the most part. When oldtimers tell their tales, many of the younger folk react as if they were hearing Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, in which four retired gentlement reminisce about the difficulties of their youth: “There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.” “You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank.” “But you try and tell the young people today that…and they won’t believe ya’.” “Nope, nope.”

But it was real. On a typical 12-month software development project, the first ten months would be spent preparing useless documents and snoring through useless meetings. With the deadline looming, the team would scramble to get as much of the work done as possible in the remaining few weeks. It meant working 24×7 until you delivered, and then crashing for a few days. That was the Death March. And it had much in common with modern-day “agile” development practices.
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What development methods and practices do you support?

From time to time, something happens that reminds me that our espoused theories aren’t always congruent with our theories in use (see this summary for some quick background info on those terms). The author of an article I had cited as an example of "binary thinking" posted a comment asking how I had gotten the idea that he was pro- or anti- anything. I took the question literally, and started thinking about how any of us might get the idea that another practitioner was pro- or anti- any given software development practice. Continue reading What development methods and practices do you support?