At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the third of four parts.
People over process
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Cathie Black was Chancellor of New York City Schools for three months. She was hired despite having no education experience and no affinity for public schools, parents, teachers and students because she was, “an excellent manager”.
I love that agile doesn’t celebrate management. It relies on individual contributors. It relies on community.
The oozy failure wrapped in the chocolatey success of agile is when we focus on process mechanics and lose sight of people.
If we do, our practice becomes arbitrary and abstract.
There’s a study that claims the best and worst performers have more in common with each other than those in the broad middle.
While the best are energized by their caring and use that passion to drive to the best outcomes, the worst are demoralized and ruined by it.
The indifferent middle, they just plug away.
When we impose a process upon a workplace to avoid failure. We rob the best performers of opportunities to engage and care.
We preclude the best in an attempt to avoid the worst and ensure mediocrity.
I acknowledge that successful products can emerge from awful workplaces. And that that good teams often create failed products.
But working in a way that tears down talented people’s desire for work is tragic. To repeatedly do this this is to sap the world of its limited supply inspiration, creativity and joy.
As agile becomes popular it becomes a buzzword. It gets promoted as a tool that solves problems when at its heart it is a set of values that encourage you to confront problems.
Where the customer doesn’t entirely know what will succeed… Where they aren’t entirely steeped in the technology…
And process gates (“handoffs”) kill collaboration.
I want to live in our imperfect reality.
I accept failure if we call it out as we recognize it, applaud the attempt and make changes so that we don’t repeat that exact failure again.
