Extreme Paradigm Shift

Does Kuhn explain how and why XP hasn't been the norm for software development but will now become so? It sounds worth a deeper look - if XP really is something that has been discovered by experiment that goes against the flow of almost all previous (mainstream) thinking about the domain. --RichardDrake

It is interesting reading Kuhn and then reading KendallScott? and DougRosenberg's critique of XP at http://www.ratio.co.uk. See CritiqueOfXp.

I don't think their article is worth responding to in detail. The tone and content are exactly what I would predict from my reading of Kuhn if XP is a ParadigmShift.

If their article was written XP style it would have a single line "buy our book". --DonWells

I think that XP is part of a broader ParadigmShift. I saw something on the news the other night about how collaborative work teams are now used in the engineering courses at MIT. We are finally discovering that the "lone gunman" model of work is not optimal; especially not for creative work.

DougRosenberg and KendallScott? say: "just as sure as the two of us paired together in chess would lose to Garry Kasparov every time, neither the buddy system nor exhaustive testing can compensate for a lack of upfront planning. After all, Garry plans his strategy very carefully", but development isn't chess. It is an open system, not a closed system. As PeterWegner might say, the intelligence is in the interactions, not the algorithms. You can throw a person alone in a room with a problem, but the longer you have them in the room the more out of touch they will become. If you want to stay effective in an open world, you have to stay open.

A few years ago, I was in a team building course. When you see groups consistently making better decisions than individuals on some types of problems, it changes your focus. I know that I am more effective when I actively engage the world rather than shutting it out. Unfortunately, the old paradigm is rather ego-centric, it sees collaboration as a sign of weakness. It closes doors rather than leaving them open. Once you get past the old way, you see where weakness lies. The weakest people are those who are so caught up in fear or pride that they can not see what is in front of them any more. We are intelligent at our boundaries. If you stop interacting, you fall away from your boundaries and you become less effective.

Funny how letting this sink in changes you. You start to ask stupid questions, you become the first male in the history of your family to ask for directions when lost. The list goes on and on.

-- MichaelFeathers