Pragmatism and Idealism in Agile
A request was sent round work for anyone interested in an Agile Coaching stint. “Probably requires a convincing pragmatist,” it said.
I’m trying to become an Agile Coach. I found the email confusing at first, because I’ve always thought I’ll make a good Agile Coach one day through the right mix of idealism and enthusiasm. I’m definitely an idealist, not a pragmatist. I don’t have enough experience to do the job, but I could see myself taking the role in the future; convincing the customer that there’s business value to be found in Agile practices, and matching the customer needs to past examples of Agile meeting them. I have imaginary conversations in my head like this:
“Well,” say I, “we’ll pair with your in-house team, so our knowledge will be passed on to them. Also, because we’re pairing, the code will be reviewed as it’s written. We find this leads to a cleaner, more legible, more maintainable code base. We’ll write tests for everything as we go along, so your in-house team will be able to change the code and still have confidence that they haven’t broken any existing functionality.”
So I’m not exactly an expert at matching business value to Agile practices, but I reckon I’ve got the right idea. If the customer needs to maintain the code after we’ve left, then we’ll take his people on board, even though they might not be experienced developers. I’ve never thought of myself as pragmatic, though. Wanting all practices to deliver business value to the customer is idealism, not pragmatism. If a particular Agile practice isn’t going to help the customer in any way, then I don’t think there’s any point in doing it. Changing ideal Agile practices to match customer needs… actually, that is pretty pragmatic, isn’t it?
Here’s a theory. Pragmatism is just idealism with the right ideals.
Chasing the dream
The worst thing about having a dream is when people say,
“I’m not interested in dreams. Please dream somewhere else.”
The best thing about having a dream is when people say,
“You and I have exactly the same dream. Can I chase it with you?”
“Your dream is cool. I’d like to help you with it.”
“I think I caught your dream over here last week. Want to go for coffee?”
“Did you know that there’s an Open Source Dreamcatcher?”
“You should talk to Dan about his dream; it’s a lot like yours.”
“If you have time, could you dream something for me?”
“You like dreams; what do you think of this one?”
It’s so much easier to find your own dream when everyone else is chasing dreams too.
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