The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Killing Agile (3/?)

Sadly, […] a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred. […] it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences. 

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Killing Agile, not an Agile book, never published on Agile website, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Agile team members.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book. […] 

It begins with a wrong attitude…

In this new leg of our journey to try to survive The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Killing Agile, after having talked about how difficult striving to fit a square peg into a round hole can be, I’m gonna lead you through some assumptions to explain what is, in my opinion, the main difference between good and bad professionals.

First assumption: no matter whether you work within an Agile framework or not, there will be good or bad professionals everywhere; having said that, what makes you a good or a bad specialist, besides your technical skills, is primarily your attitude towards the team, the project, the environment you work within.

So, if your attitude is generally inappropriate (due to your inborn negligence and/or hostility, for example), you will probably be a bad professional.

Second assumption: programmers and testers, in order to perform their corresponding jobs properly, need to collaborate, communicate, negotiate and so on. 

So, if you, as a programmer or as a tester, systematically refuse to cooperate with your counterpart, you are bound to be labeled as a bad professional.

Third assumption: since whatever project usually needs a team to complete it, the team should share the same general goal: doing their best to take the project to its end. 

So, if you don’t care about the goal, if teamwork is not one of your soft skills and —what’s even worse— if you steadily act against both the team and the goal, you are definitely a bad professional.

The unavoidable corollary of all these assumptions is that, even though you can easily realize you might have a problem if your boss complains about you, you should also take into account that things might get even worse if your workmates start complaining about you, as this likely means that, in case of trouble, there will be nobody willing to back you up. 

All in all, I would recommend that bad professionals seriously —and with as much agility as possible— consider improving themselves before it’s too late to apologize for their wrong attitude.

And now my question is: do you agree that a good attitude is crucial in any work environment and even more so within an Agile project?

First edition date: June 2016