Re: Improvement vs Change

banshee858 wrote:
> ... "XP is about social change"... It has 
> been my experience that many organizations want improvement, but I 
> have yet to encounter one who wants social change.

Hi, Carlton. My experience has been similar, and Agile practitioners are 
not the first to see the need to be able to change. Any innovation 
implies change. In fact, the most successful innovations capitalize on 
change. And any time you take the initiative, you are doing something 
different than what everyone else in the organization is doing; hence, 
again, change.

But people in general fear change. "Better the devil you know," and so 
forth. And many workplaces are driven by fear. However, I have also seen 
collaborative, initiative-driven, teamwork-driven environments. The 
latter are not always resistent; they do change parts of their process 
as they see the need arise, in order to improve the process. Most 
workplaces are mixtures of these extremes, sometimes embracing different 
values at different levels.

I don't know to what extent you can change things where you work. That 
question is a pandora's box. It depends on your position and your 
relationships with others in the organization as well as your skills and 
personality, how savvy you are, how persistent, how fireproof. In any 
case, I wish you the best in whatever course you choose.

-TimK


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