Don't Suspend Disbelief

A colleague of mine sent me a posting on retrospectives the other day that contained the following perspective on the prime directive:

The prime directive is a very deliberate request for us to suspend disbelief. Let's pretend that for the next two hours, or whatever the duration of the retrospective, that we will openly accept that everyone in the room has acted with the best of intentions in a way that was in line with their best efforts and abilities. Of course, this is naive, but let's consider it a little mental challenge. Let's take all of our suspicions and judgments about the others in the room and try to turn them on their heads and try to figure out *how* someone could behave in that way and it being in line with their best efforts. It’s a very challenging thing to do as every core of our being believes the opposite. 

What?!?!? I couldn’t disagree more with this view. I have never felt that the prime directive required suspension of disbelief. I don’t think that was Norman's intent when he wrote it, although I still have to read this book.

To me the prime directive is all about putting yourself in the other person's shoes. The great majority of people in this world want to do a good job and try to do a good job. Sometimes other things get in the way, but they don't want them too. In all my years on the job I've never worked with a person who was trying to be subversive on a software team. Subversive team members shouldn’t attend the retrospective, because they should already have been let go.  I've dealt with slackers and poor performers, but normal people don't want to fail and don't spend their energy trying to sabotage the team. Generally, they either don't know how to do a good job or are not focused on the job at hand.

Unfortunately, many times people fail to put themselves in the other person's shoes. People tend to look at a failure and tend to blame the person.  Assigning blame doesn't help a team improve how they work and learn from its experience. The point is to look a little deeper. Determine how to help the team, and potentially an individual, from letting the same issue continually cause problems.

The prime directive definitely won't work if you just read it at the beginning of a meeting. It will work if you read it at the beginning of the meeting and actually BELIEVE what you are saying. I believe in my team members. Do you?

Comments

[George Dinwiddie]

I agree completely. But it seems that many people, especially smart developers, have a hard time with this simple directive. (See http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2007/03/03/bearing-in-mind-that-there-are-many-factors-of-which-i-am-unaware/ for some thoughts on that aspect.) Often we must try something out before we can believe it. Being told is rarely convincing enough. Perhaps starting with suspension of disbelief will allow them to learn to truly believe it.