I spend a lot of my time dealing with and talking to managers about agility and how the principles of XP are relevant to the non programmers in the organisation. It may seem obvious to us but sometimes it needs to be spelled out. There is a sort of fear of loss of control from most of the management people I talk to. I have to assure them that control is an illusion at the best of times and that trust is a better, more productive way. One of the things I like about the open open session is that it grasps that fear and says “ok lets see what happens if you do relinquish control – will people mutiny and waste time or will they rally and try to address the issues.”. We can use these sessions to show that people will naturally allow the real priorities to surface and in a more direct way than they might otherwise be able to on a rigid agenda.