Programmer Chooses Tasks

Hmm... I was thinking about CollectiveCodeOwnership a little while, and I wonder: If I don't like doing GUI, but I'm really good at the other tiers, ought I be rotated into GUI pairs anyway? My gut instinct is to say, "No", with a caveat. There may be grotty parts of the system that everyone fears working on. In this case, I'd imagine the group should encourage pairs to bite the bullet and do it anyway, and then the next time a grotty issue came up, the volunteers would be free from the responsibility of having to work on it.

Thoughts?

-JohnDuncan

Within XP, tasks are to be chosen, not assigned. A coach or friend might advise you to widen your horizons, but you can sign up for bit-mashing every time if you like. Most people get tired of the same old and move to other areas one in a while.

One particular pathology is that hard systems guys like me, with limited domain knowledge, are often reluctant to take on tasks that are close to the domain. We should be whacked with a rolled-up newspaper when we do this for too long. As your post suggests, it's better if people know more and aren't tied to anything in particular. --RonJeffries