Extreme Anti Roles

Lifted from the page Extreme Roles, there are a few Anti-Roles worth recognising.

Cowboy Coder:
Loves Cowboy Coding. Comments are welcome. See Xp Is Genius Friendly.

Standards And Methodology Guy:
Resident of the ivory tower, normally an ex-academic who's never done a day's worth of good, hard coding in his life, but has the power and need to tell you what you're doing wrong, and why XP can't and won't work. Your manager can normally run interference if he's got enough courage. (Don't forget his best friend, the Buzzword Masochist).

God Head:
Wants to be Chief Architect or Manager but isn't. Basically a needy personality. Has to be at the center of everything. Memorizes enough details of the system to leverage himself into every design discussion. Takes on every responsibility in sight. The rest of the team is scared to touch the code or the design without him. Development bottlenecks.

These roles tend to introduce a bit of "noise" into the equation, and have another characteristic - if the project goes badly, it's not their fault, but if it goes well, it's their project ;-) -- Joseph Pelrine

If these people are on your project, remove them. If you can't, remove yourself or prepare for pain. -- Ron Jeffries

Great!! While short, this is probably the best advice I've ever seen. In fact, one of the things I actually liked about Edward Yourdon's Death March and Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer was his statements along these lines. -- Robert Di Falco


See original on c2.com