Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Tribalism

A sense of belonging can go too far and become problematic. It goes too far when it becomes tribalism rather than mere affinity and shared experience. The human being is a naturally tribal animal. The tribal system seems have evolved for our survival. But deep in our genetic make-up their seems to be a core conflict. Women are genetically programmed to breed-out, to maintain the breadth and health of the gene pool. Men on the other hand are genetically programmed to protect their own genetic code and this manifests itself in a tendency to beat the livin bejeezus out of anything carrying a significantly different set of genetic code. So women make love with other tribes and make war against them. This is a core conflict for which I doubt the ability of The Theory of Constraints to find an injection. In modern society, most of us ease our inner tribal anxiety with sport. In the UK and much of the rest of the world it is football (soccer) and in the United States, it is college sport - anything will do, baseball, basketball, football (sic), etc. This is usually accompanied by a spouse sitting rooting for the other team just to annoy us (men).

However, we see tribalism elsewhere in society too. I get asked about it all the time…

“Anderson, eh? What’s your clan?”
“Anderson!”
“Hmmm. That so! You have your own clan! Do you have a tartan?”
“Yes!”
“A kilt?”
“Yes, but I never get a chance to wear it in the United States.”

Political scientists will tell you its a 101 first year college credit to understand why politics tends to polarize into two camps. In the United States your either a Donkey or an Elephant or a laughing stock Naderite who “wasted his vote”. In software lifecycle process in this modern decade, you are either an eXtreme Programmer or you are a traditional software engineer. Or so a large element of the XP camp would have us think. The truth is that this form of tribalism is as useful as 30,000 foul mouthed neds shouting racial abuse at a black player from the terracing of Glasgow football stadium [Ed. They are all seater stadiums these days].

I wrote my feelings about this loss of focus on what is truly important before. Asking are you extreme or not? is not the right question. Asking, how extreme is it? is still the wrong question. The right question is asking what is the best thing to do to maximize the profit and return on investment now and in the future for the stockholders. The answer will vary according to the business - both the business model and the maturity of the industry. Understanding the principles behind eXtreme Programming is what is fundamentally important then knowing when to apply those principles appropriately is what follows.

If you must insist on being tribal and in some virtual form of painting your face with blue die, wrapping your body in ten yards of plaid in a set pattern and playing the bagpipes for the neighboring bullies, is your thing, then remember that your tribe had better stick to its own territory or it might just find itself in a battle it can’t win.

Of course, denial ain’t just a river. We don’t fight wars over software process. There is no contest to win or lose. When we don’t want to be objective, we humans tend to bury ourselves in denial and support our egos with belief. Sometimes the tribalism associated with XP goes further. It becomes a religion - a blind faith, a bellief without objectivity. I once had lunch with a staff member to get to know him. I asked what he thought of agile development and he replied, “Well I’m an eXtreme Programmer, so….” When I relayed the tale to our CFO, he said, “So do we need to rehabilitate this person?” I’ll leave discussion on XP as religion for another time.