Chapter 19

Story of Team C

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Imagine you are in a big team, without a strong leadership everyone is going in a different direction. Just a few seem able to reach agreements, owning and sharing principles, and discussing how to apply them best for the collective benefit. They spend hours helping each other, often pairing together over the same code. But they are the minority and are largely outnumbered by egos and wannabe heroes.

Nevertheless, facts are with the few, which slowly over time conquer respect. But far from making the impact they want, the team as a whole is still delivering neither quality nor quantity, strangled by an unreachable consensus and inevitable, growing technical debt.

Then, imagine one day they told you, "If we don't deliver something significant in four months, our project will be dumped...