Garrick West on 'Building' Great Developers with XP & Agile plus the Best Debugging

The Mob Mentality Show

🔥 How do you actually build great software developers? How do you debug like a pro? And what happens when XP (Extreme Programming) makes a comeback after the Scrum backlash?

Join us as Garrick West—a seasoned XP practitioner, Agile coach, and software craftsmanship advocate—dives into:
✅ Building Agile Software Developers: From XP mentorship to industry-academia collaboration
✅ The Best Debugging Strategies: Unpacking The Debugging Book and applying its rules in a mob
✅ Reviving XP & Software Crafting: Why XP is more crucial than ever in Agile teams

🚀 Garrick's Story: From Early Coding to XP Champion
Garrick started coding at 10 years old (at day camps in the 80s! 😅), earned a Computer Science degree, and had his development worldview shaped by reading the first edition of Extreme Programming Explained. He has worked at XP-centric organizations, trained teams in TDD (Test-Driven Development), Ensemble Programming, and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment), and even revamped a college curriculum from Waterfall to XP/Scrum.

🎯 "Building" Agile Software Developers

• The power of an XP coach early in a developer’s journey
• Public speaking as a dev skill? (Toastmasters, teaching at community college)
• What happened when Garrick helped convert a college curriculum from Waterfall to XP/Scrum?
• Industry experts + academia: How can professional devs and educators collaborate better?
• The apprentice model: What it means and why learning stages (like the Dreyfus Model) matter
• AI & developer education: Does AI replace early learning stages, or is it just a slick salesman?
• Scaling Gilded Rose Kata to different skill levels
• Test Coverage as a red herring—what should we focus on instead?

🐞 Debugging: The Missing Developer Superpower
Ever heard of The Debugging Book? Most developers haven’t—but it’s a game-changer. We explore:

• Debugging as problem-solving, not just "stepping through" in an IDE
• The 9 Debugging Rules: From reading the manual to never throwing away a good test tool
• How to gamify debugging in a mob & introduce a "debugging auditor" role
• The anti-pattern of multiple experiments at once—and how to avoid it
• Why debugging is like navigating a labyrinth with a million wrong paths

🔄 Reviving XP & Software Crafting After the Scrum Backlash

• XP fills Scrum’s missing middle: Building the right thing (Scrum) AND building it right (XP)
• How Scrum without XP leads to a “Ball of Mud” in just 18 months
• Why XP + Lean is the ultimate combination
• Breaking free from sprints & pressure cookers—just focus on continuous iterations
• Can XP stand without Scrum? Or does Scrum need XP?

💡 Don’t miss this high-energy, insight-packed conversation with Garrick West!

📢 Comment below: What’s YOUR experience with XP, Agile, or debugging challenges?
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/vxLDm-13Ny4