One principle of Extreme Programming is Diversity. If I say that and you think racial diversity, I'm afraid you might have lost the plot given our recent political situation. Valuing diversity of skin color is no more helpful than valuing diversity of hair color.

When I say diversity, I mean diversity of thought, skills, perspectives, attitudes, and experience. The strength of having this diversity arises when it's time to solve a complex problem. Most complex problems have multiple solutions, and having that diversity on the team creates opportunity to propose multiple creative options to solve the complex problem.

Kent Beck explains the desired consequence of this kind of diversity:

“Conflict is the inevitable companion of diversity. Not conflict in the ‘we hate each other and we just can’t make progress’ sense, but in the ‘there are two ways to solve this’ sense. How do you choose?”

— Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained

Of course, in order for a diverse team to work together, they need to respect each other and listen to each other carefully for understanding while they disagree on the best ways to move forward. If your team disagrees, but individuals view the disagreement as a personal attack or a sign of disrespect, you won't be able to have a productive discussion.

I have incredible respect for the individuals on my last team, so I became actively excited when the opportunity arose to disagree. I knew my teammates would listen to and try to clarify my ideas, and I would afford them the same dignity. The result of such a debate rarely ended in us agreeing on my or anyone's idea as it was originally presented. The process of clarification and debate would polish each idea until one was clearly the best idea given what we presently knew. Even if one idea wasn't the clear winner, we would agree to try something and learn during and after implementation whether it really was a good solution.

Of course, the foundation of this kind of team debate culture is psychological safety, trust, and respect. We were all okay being wrong on the road to getting it right. We understood that "your idea won't work" did not extend to "and you should be ashamed of presenting it". We were embracing the XP practice of Whole Team.

How do you think about Diversity? Have you been a part of such a diverse team? How did you work together to solve problems?

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