This is, unshockingly, the follow-up to Part One of the wrap-up of my Agile 2009 session. Here I will fully put on the curator hat and discuss the art.

In no real order…

  • Interesting how there were hats that no one voted for, including the person who put it on the wall. I should have asked ‘why’ at the time, but instead I can only speculate that they were hypothesizing on a hat rather than one they actually wear.
  • Speaking of hypothesizing, I’m a bit surprised that ‘scientist’ was not put up there. A scientist thinks of a hypothesis and then tests to prove / disprove it.
  • I’m not shocked that Detective (and its variants) came in first.
  • I’m rather worried that Firefighter was tied for second. That is a big warning sign for those teams I think.

  • I think I screwed up by lumping Wizard, Jester and Fool together and they are different. Here is the opening paragraph to Wikipedia’s Jester entry

    In societies where freedom of speech was not recognized as a right, the court jester—precisely because anything he said was by definition “a jest” and “the uttering of a fool”—could speak frankly on controversial issues[1] in a way in which anyone else would have been severely punished for. Monarchs understood the usefulness of having such a person at their side.[1] Still, even the jester was not entirely immune from punishment, and he needed to walk a thin line and exercise careful judgment in how far he might go – which required him to be far from a fool, in the modern sense.

    It goes on to split it into two types

    One may conceptualize fools in two camps: those of the natural fool type and those of the licensed fool type. Whereas the natural fool was seen as innately nit-witted, moronic, or mad, the licensed fool was given leeway by permission of the court. In other words, both were excused, to some extent, for their behavior, the first because he “couldn’t help it,” and the second by decree.

    I tend to think of the Jester as ‘natural’, and a Fool as ‘licensed’.

    Now a Wizard is someone who does things that people do not understand, or think impossible. That is quite different.

  • I think a combination of Leader, Propagandist and Teacher would be a nifty one.
  • I like the Film Critic idea as well. The card for it has expert on many facets and points towards (threats to) value. That does seem rather tester-ish.
  • I wonder what correlation there would be if I had done the same session with all developers rather than testers. I guessing, but I suspect the ‘maintainer of systems’ ones would go away.
  • I’m not sure how we can really be an impartial reviewer of code. We absolutely have a stake in it which makes us partial.
  • Sociopath and Realist likely are coupled

That’s my list of things that have been working on for the last two weeks. What pops into your head when looking at the list?