Focus on the Value, not the Practice

Jakpat Mingmongkolmitr

A common mistake in the Agile and Craftsmanship communities is to promote practices instead of the value they provide. Let’s take TDD as an example. One of the most common questions asked inside the Craftsmanship communities is “How do I convince my manager/colleague/team to do TDD?” That is the wrong question. The problem here is that we are offering a solution before agreeing on the problem. People will not change the way they work if they do not see the value.

Instead of pushing TDD, maybe we could start agreeing on the value of reducing the time it takes to test our entire system. How long does it take today? Two hours? Two days? Two weeks? How many people are involved? What if we could reduce it to 20 minutes? Two minutes? Maybe even 2 seconds? And what if we could do that at any time just by pressing a button? Would that give us a good return on investment? Would that make our lives easier? Would we be able to release reliable software faster?

If we agree that the answer is yes, then we can start talking about practices which could help us achieve that. TDD would be a natural choice here. For those who are not so keen on TDD, we should ask what practice they would prefer. What practice can they suggest that could bring the same or higher value according to the agreed-upon goals?

Agreeing first on the goals to be achieved is essential when discussing practices. The only thing that should not be acceptable is to reject a practice without providing a better alternative.

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