Sidebar: Surviving XP Culture Shock

By Gary Anthes

March 29, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Even the most ardent XP evangelists at Sabre Airline Solutions acknowledge that XP is not for everyone.
"As soon as we implemented XP, we knew who our prima donnas were, because prima donnas can't survive in an XP environment," says Damon Hougland, director of airline products and services. "Some of them left the organization, and some adjusted and grew."
"When I heard about this, I thought, 'If we do XP, I'm quitting,'" recalls Chris Shepperd, a senior programmer. "The accountability is higher, but that's good once you get past the pride part of it and see it's for the betterment of the team. And it's helped my career; with cross-training, I've learned more than I would have sitting in my cube by myself."
Because some of the tenets of XP are counterintuitive, it's important at the outset to bring in knowledgeable and enthusiastic trainers and coaches, says Brad Jensen, Sabre's senior vice president for airline product development. Sabre contracted Object Mentor Inc. to give developers a one-week class on XP. Object Mentor spent another week sitting with programmers in the development labs.
"I was very skeptical at first," recalls Wesley Williams, a senior developer and XP coach. "Doing a lot of testing was good, but writing the test first was a little weird. And the pairing? That was going to slow us down."
But Williams says he was won over by the end of the one-week training class. "What I liked best was that we had some junior people on the team and they came up in skills very quickly. So the thing I hadn't liked about pairing, I now saw as a huge advantage."

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