XTC: Strategies for Reconciling Perspectives

Topic: Strategies for Reconciling Prospectives

During our day, as we work on code and work together, there a various practices and techniques that we put to use. We also all exhibit our own personal behaviours as well as the emergent behaviours of the entire group. Every group has norms beliefs about the world that govern their behaviour. Some of these enable the reconciling perspectives model to play out and others inhibit it.

The Reconciling Perspectives model looks at the interpersonal dynamics in groups that are creating software. A “perspective” is an individual’s understanding of the job they are trying to get done (a specific programming task, the purpose of the software system, etc.). The perspectives of everyone working together drift apart over time and discovering and correcting these drifts is the process of “reconciling perspectives”.

A rough overview of Reconciling Perspectives is:
A person discovers a perspective mismatch that will impede getting the job done and reaches out to others to start the reconciliation process. The parties negotiate to create a consensual perspective of what is to be delivered. The supplier of the deliverable then cuts off most communication in order to concentrate on producing their understanding of the work product. When the deliverable is completed, it is provided to the acquirer, who then validates and accepts it (confirming the shared perspective) or rejects it (called a “surprise” in the model).

We will explore this model by providing observations and examples from our own experience of actions that have enhanced a person or group’s ability to reconcile perspectives and actions that have hindered it.

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About XTC

The eXtreme Tuesday Club (XTC) is London's oldest agile meetup, and has been meeting since 1999. Initially the meetup was focused on discussing Extreme Programming (XP), but it has expanded to include anything XP, agile, lean, or the larger context in which we do software development activities.

We welcome all software development newbies, practitioners, and experts to discuss topics of interest over drinks.

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