Thread by @Rubberduck203

I spent four years working with extremely talented people. We worked in pretty radical ways, but I was always pushing farther and challenging the “status quo” of what was already a fairly extreme way of building software. 1/?

I never felt like the experimentation and boundary pushing I was doing was all that radical. It was just a natural evolution of how we did things, perhaps even a bit more pragmatic. Definitely less dogmatic. 2/?

After a ton of conversations, interviews, and 3 months at another great, but different, company, I’m realizing just how radical my views on software dev are.

When you’re surrounded by greatness, pushing just a little further doesn’t seem like a big deal. 3/?

The truth is, folks are still struggling to accept things that have been common place in some circles for decades.

Empowerment, trust, quality, transparency...

These are still radical concepts to many. 4/?

I’m sorry. We’re you expecting me to mention TDD, CI, Pair Programming, DevOps, feature flags, testing in production, or some other technical practice?

Those are great too, but they’re just that, practices; practices that support our principles and values. 5/?

Anyway, back to the point. If you want a high performance team, hire smart people, give them a mission, and trust them to get it done. Want to know how it’s going? Ask them. You trust them, so they’ll trust they can tell you. 6/?

Now I understand why my “radical” peers thought I was off my rocker. People already struggle with setting small goals and trusting teams to deliver in small increments. How could I possibly suggest we don’t need story points, or sprints, or dozens of other rituals? 7/?

Here’s the truth.

An awful lot of teams need these ritual crutches to perform well. They help them align and behave as a *team*.

I don’t begrudge anyone for using these tools. If you works for you, do it. 8/?

Imagine an athlete trying to run with crutches though. They get in the way. They’re actually dangerous.

The best teams don’t need them.

I was privileged to work with some of the best. May our paths cross again. In the meantime, I’m going to see what new techniques I might learn