--- title: "[Book] \"Slack\", Where Learning Happens" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/23/book-quotslackquot-where-learning-happens.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/23/book-quotslackquot-where-learning-happens.html" published: "2004-05-23T18:11:00" updated: "2004-05-23T18:11:00" tags: [".Net Quotations"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I saw this post yesterday on the XP mailing list and I just had to quote it. It quotes from the book Slack by Tom DeMarco (author of “ PeopleWare ” and “ The Mythical Man Month “, two of my all time favorite books) and…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # \[Book\] "Slack", Where Learning Happens By Roy Osherove May 23, 2004 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations) **Historical article** · Originally published May 23, 2004; technical details may be outdated. I saw this post yesterday on the [XP mailing list](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/) and I just had to quote it. It quotes from the book [Slack](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767907698/iserializable-20) by Tom DeMarco (author of “[PeopleWare](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/iserializable-20)” and “[~The Mythical Man Month~](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201835959/iserializable-20)“, two of my all time favorite books) and it reads brilliantly. I think I'll have to buy this book now. This quotes an answer to a thread that talks about how even in successful XP projects, people who have actually been involved in the project will choose to simply disbelieve that XP was responsible for the success of the project: _\>Yes, these things definitely happen.  If early projects are successful, \>people often look for any reason other than XP that this could have \>happened.  In addition, people will choose to simply disbelieve that it \>is true no matter how provable it is.  In essence, people are willing to \>call you a liar in order to maintain their fantasy that XP couldn't have \>made any difference._  There's a quote from DeMarco's \_Slack\_ that I found interesting and may apply here: "I know from my early years of teaching development methods that when people learn something that really matters to them, they go through a moment of panic.  As soon as it's apparent that this new approach is superior to what they have been doing for years, there is an unspoken "Oh shit" that ripples through the room.  Their faces turn white.  You can practically hear the flip-flops in their stomachs. "At such a moment, it helps the learner to be able to glance over at someone else whose face is also white, who's also got a little perspiration showing on the upper lip.  The presence of the co-learner, the patient urging of the facilitator, and a lot of easy, unthreatening reinforcing material are necessary to help get people past this professional's learning block.  Without all these elements in place, many or all of the potential learners will dismiss the troubling new idea as 'preposterous.'" from chapter 26, "Where Learning Happens," of \_Slack\_, by Tom DeMarco. Jim \-- Jim Shore ## More in .Net Quotations [All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations) - May 28, 2004 ### [Workaround for Help Issue in Community Technology Preview May 2004](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/28/workaround-for-help-issue-in-community-technology-preview-ma.html) - May 26, 2004 ### [Cool VS 2005 "Burton" videos](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/26/cool-vs-2005-quotburtonquot-videos.html) - May 21, 2004 ### [Useful config files scenarios to keep on hand](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/21/useful-config-files-scenarios-to-keep-on-hand.html) - May 20, 2004 ### [NUnit 2.2 beta 1](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/20/nunit-22-beta-1.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/