Agile Native
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.
Read More
Alice Waters says (and does) it best: start with good ingredients and discern for yourself.
Read More
If there is one Agile principle that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, it’s this one: “Maximize the amount of work not done.”
In fact, it’s normal—expected, even—to do just the opposite: get work done, and the more work, the better.
Agile values work done too, especially working software. But Agile values “work not done” just as much. Without it, things quickly get messy, and what may look like “agility” to some is anything but.
Read More
There are two sides to mastery: the good and the ugly.
The good side of mastery is something to strive for: be a perfectionist, dedicate yourself to a task, do something to be proud of.
But mastery is a whole different thing for those who think they know (or are) better. This sort of “mastery” begets narrow-mindedness and petty rigidity.
Read MoreKnowing enough to think you are right, but not knowing enough to know you are wrong.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson
