Feedback for improvement in agility
February 18th, 2009
Last week, during a casual chat with our Agile evangelist, I asked about what could be improved in our team based on what he observed.
He quickly said that it depends on a lot of things and that it is difficult to give feedback without being part of the team. He asked me to pose that question to the team. We already do that in retrospective meetings.
But, after pushing further to get some high-level things that we could improve upon, he gave me a few suggestions:
- Adopt pair-programming for every line of code that we write.
- Increase the level of communication between team members
- Everyone needs to really pay attention during stand-ups
- Work towards overall team productivity rather than individual productivity
- …..
My immediate reaction as soon as I heard “pair-programming for every line of code” was to point out that it may not be the right thing to do all the time. Now, I realize how stupid I was..! I was asking for feedback. I should have shut my mouth and should have treated every piece of advice as a compliment. I did thank him for his time, however.
This was very valuable feedback. I need to apologize to him tomorrow for arguing with him even if I did not completely agree with his opinion.. 
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