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by Mark Levison.
Original Post: Why I speak of Agile/Scrum and not XP - or Language matters
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In Call it what it is!! Dave Rooney says if you’re doing Scrum with XP engineering practices, then call it XP? Well Dave there’s a story that explains why I general don't lead with the language of XP:
A few years ago when I was first learning about Agile and doing my reading several of co-workers (all developers) saw what I was reading: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development and Pair Programming. Their reaction: that's crazy stuff, you're not going to try introducing that around here. Management was a little more open but also saw it as odd. Finally I read the XP mailing list and felt like I was in a room of fanatics (circa 2002/2003). At that stage I got turned off. In the end I introduced unit testing and code reviews- it was the best I could do.
I started reading about Crystal (hello Alistair), but there was no community behind it (the mailing list had 4-5 people) and then I stumbled across Scrum. Perfect no – nothing is. But it gave us a language to use that didn't scare management or the developers. Now several years and two acquisitions later I'm helping to introduce TDD to a development organisation in excess of a thousand people.
If I had tried to sell XP I probably wouldn't be in this position today. So like it or not language matters and you have to go with what resonates with people. Today if I were talking to Senior Management at an organisation I would talk about quality and waste removal. To the mid level managers I would talk about Agile (generic) and to team members both Agile and Engineering Practices.
Finally it helps to remember that the engineering practices predate Scrum and XP - if my memory serves they come from Kent Beck and the smalltalk world. So maybe we should say: Scrum and Smalltalk Engineering practices.
N.B. Not everyone who was on the XP mailing list will have had the same experience. In addition at the time Ron J. was part of the problem for me (sorry Ron). I found his tone very rough – since I’ve come to appreciate how he can ask why in just the right place.
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