Good will toward all
One of the interesting things about Agile development is that it assumes good will, or at least professionalism. The team is assumed to code together, no one is in charge of assignments, although there are scheduling coordinators, and no one can tell another person how long it will take to do a unit of work. I don't think this would work everywhere, but in the places it works, it seems that estimating accurately is more valuable than erring on either side, and so there is peer pressure to be both accurate and within roughly the same scope as your colleagues. In a move that prevents abuse, estimation takes place before people choose their tasks, by playing a weird sort of variant of rock-paper-scissors where everyone holds up fingers for how many units they think it will take, simultaneously. The project is then estimated by the plurality number. Anyway.
I got to thinking about how many of our adult interactions are predicated on faith and good will, rather than coercion. Or that may just be my utopian goggles. I can make my kids pick something up by threatening to remove privileges (screen games are the first go). But in the rest of my life, it doesn't work like that. How could one have an egalitarian relationship if it was based on withholding privileges? People who are our peers must be persuaded to do what we want, and if we can't make the argument in a way that is sufficiently compelling to them, then they don't do it.
This seems like a disadvantage for people who are not skilled at persuasion, or who are trying to persuade someone who has a counter-agenda. It is. You ever have that feeling that no matter how well you explain the problem, someone you know is just not getting it, not going to do what you want? You ever have that moment when you'd really like to tell him to just break up with her, but your persuasion is inadequate? What can you do? He is his own human. And peers do not have coercion as a tool, axiomatically. If you act coercively, you are no longer acting as a peer, but as a person who has the right to behave coercively.
I recently had an incident where someone I thought was a peer appealed to me as a coercive actor. It was surprising to me, and made me evaluate what I'm doing, and how it looks to others.
How about you? Are you a peer, or a power player? What do you think you're seen as?
I got to thinking about how many of our adult interactions are predicated on faith and good will, rather than coercion. Or that may just be my utopian goggles. I can make my kids pick something up by threatening to remove privileges (screen games are the first go). But in the rest of my life, it doesn't work like that. How could one have an egalitarian relationship if it was based on withholding privileges? People who are our peers must be persuaded to do what we want, and if we can't make the argument in a way that is sufficiently compelling to them, then they don't do it.
This seems like a disadvantage for people who are not skilled at persuasion, or who are trying to persuade someone who has a counter-agenda. It is. You ever have that feeling that no matter how well you explain the problem, someone you know is just not getting it, not going to do what you want? You ever have that moment when you'd really like to tell him to just break up with her, but your persuasion is inadequate? What can you do? He is his own human. And peers do not have coercion as a tool, axiomatically. If you act coercively, you are no longer acting as a peer, but as a person who has the right to behave coercively.
I recently had an incident where someone I thought was a peer appealed to me as a coercive actor. It was surprising to me, and made me evaluate what I'm doing, and how it looks to others.
How about you? Are you a peer, or a power player? What do you think you're seen as?