Fri, 10 Feb 2006

Personality Styles in Adopting Agile

Over the course of two years of a development project, we introduced team members to various agile practices. We observed which were adopted and which were rejected by team members and looked at how individual personality factors correlated with the kinds of responses to the practices.

By "agile practices" we mean the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto.

People in our project ended up lumped into one of the following four areas:

Adopted

Picked up the practice and used it with reasonable correctness.

Adopted but Distorted

Picked up on the term and the form but missed the intent and did something not agile.

Actively Rejected

Did not adopt the practice and argued against its use.

Passively Rejected.

Kept doing things differently form agile practices but never sought to justify or debate.

The project observed the reactions of individual team members to agile practices and related those reaction to personality types such as the categories suggested by the Myers-Briggs Type Index. For people who are introducing agile practices we think we might have some things to look for and ways to adapt to the varying responses usually seen among individuals in a team new to agile.

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