Agile Native
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One thing makes us human, and it drives everything we do: stories.
We need stories to make sense of the world.
Not just any stories, mind you. To please us, our stories must be two things: simple and painless.
Simple. Painless. Please.
Painless—or painful for someone else.
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That nagging feeling that you should be doing something else right now.
It’s time to slow down, my friends.
If your meetings are back-to-back, let’s face it, you have too many meetings.
If your first instinct is to check your email, don’t.
If you scrum, unscrum.
Take a deep breath and think about it:
There’s never enough time to do something right, but there’s always enough time to do it over.”
—Melvin Conway, How Do Committees Invent?
So unwind and wander.
Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries—the ‘non-linear’ ones—are highly likely to require wandering.”
—Jeff Bezos, 2018 Letter to Shareholders
And when you’re ready, come waste your time with me.
It’s clear what King Arthur Baking stands for:
“We are bakers, committed now as always to spreading the joy of baking. The joy of being part of a tradition and contributing to a craft. And of course, the joy your cookies, cakes, breads and pies bring to your life and the lives of others. That’s the power of baking.”
Now, replace “bakers/baking” with “makers/making,” and “cookies and pies” with “products,” and you’ll get the gist of Agile.
Indeed, Agile is for makers, not managers.
And the joy of Agile is the power of Agile, not processes, tools, or metrics.
Agile is about the mushy stuff of values and culture.”
—Jim Highsmith, About the Manifesto
So think of yourself as a King Arthur baker. Be a King Agile maker.
If you are a manager, be an enabler, not an enforcer.
Do your part and let good things rise.
Thanks to Dan Pink, we know three things drive us:
Agile practitioners rejoice! All told, these three things are what Agile is all about.
Alois Ruf and Melvin Conway agree: design by committee doesn’t work. If you want great, it takes one person’s vision, the character to stay true to an idea, and the persistence to make it happen.
Listen to Alois Ruf on Jay Leno’s Garage:
Jay Leno: “To me, the best cars are always one person’s vision. When I was growing up, it was Duesenberg, it was Porsche, it was W. O. Bentley, it was Gordon Murray, it was yourself—people who have one idea of what it should be, and they are usually right! Cars designed by committee, uh…”
Alois Ruf: “Committees don’t work. It takes one head, and [they have] to be persistent to make it happen.”
Design by committee doesn’t work, and Melvin Conway agrees.
Melvin Conway wrote a paper in 1967: “How Do Committees Invent?” The gist of it became known as Conway’s Law.
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