My "agile" adventure started back in 1999 when I first read Kent Beck's "eXtreme Programming explained - embrace change". Those were the glory days of RUP and CMM ... process, process, process. Kent's story was - like Tom Demarco's "Peopleware" classic - about people, people, people and the craftmanship of software engineering.
But making the move from process-focus to people-focus in order to achieve hyper productivity in software development is a fundamental paradigm shift which is in our industry, not the natural next thing. When hitting the radar, the process and Command&Control guys laughed ... a couple of years later, they showed wrong.
Over the past 10 years, the agile wave hit the shores of many businesses and service companies (first in the US, later on in Europe and the rest of the world), and many organizations adapted to the agile slang. The wolves learned to speak Sheep, but they're still wolves. They preach "self-organizing-teams", but continue to micro manage and fill books with rules, roles and responsibilities. They preach "refine your plan as you go", but still expect detailed do-or-die gantt-charts with quality/scope/means/time all fixed and carved in stone. They preach no-big-design-up-front, but expect massive architectural diagrams in iteration 0. They preach trust, empowerment and engagement but manage by fear.
They speak the language but didn't make the paradigm shift, and I doubt that they will ever do as it's about embracing change and uncertainty, something most of us fear.
Nothing against wolves, as long as they speak Wolf.
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2 comments:
The sheep will have to devour the wolves, some way or another.
Dunno why, but I'm feeling hungry this morning.
Sheep are productive, Wolves are destructive. But growing wool takes time, killing is only an impulse away. (BTW, wolves are not interested in wool, it negatively influences digestion)
Leaders in organizations don't have to be Sheep themselves, but shepherd-dogs. They might look a bit like wolves, but instead of eating Sheep, they guide them swiftly.
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