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I've been reading a lot on focused work and this sounds like the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen. I can't recommend Cal Newport's book "Deep Work: R
by tuxxy 7y ago
I've been reading a lot on focused work and this sounds like the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen. I can't recommend Cal Newport's book "Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world" enough.
He goes through a lot of psychology and science of how people work better when they're not distracted. It seems that all of the "Extreme Programming" guidelines go quite the opposite of what the science, per Cal Newport, suggests.
He also points out that collaboration is perfectly acceptable during deep and focused work, but this doesn't sound like how it should be at all.
- kd5bjo 7y agoI can second the recommendation for Deep Work, but it’s not the end of the story. Richard Hamming points out in You and Your Research that the researchers who were open to distraction tended to do a better job figuring out what to work on. In Programming as Theory Building, Peter Naur argues that the primary focus on a programming team should be developing a shared understanding of the problem space in which the program will operate. While I’ve never worked in an XP team, the description here sounds like it’s primarily focused on making sure the individual members of the team aren’t accidentally working against each other. For projects that aren’t reliant on the sort of insight that Deep Work is teaching us to generate, the team cohesion may be able to make up for the hit to individual productivity.