Agile Lab Blog

1. The Root of the problem: The Difference Between Dreams and Reality - Life is Wiggly

• “I have a plan” - “So what?”
  • Planning changes nothing
  • If you don’t have a plan for changing your plan, you don’t have a plan

• Do the “Chicken Soup Exercise”
  • What is the difference between things you thought about doing and things you actually did?
  • I know I really had the Chicken soup because I spilt it on my shirt
• A plan is thinking about about having Chicken soup, it isn’t actually having Chicken soup
  • Actually having Chicken soup is a messy business
• Thought goes in straight lines, real life is “wiggly”

2. Consistency - the Hobgoblin of Little Minds

• Doing what you say you’re going to do is a powerful human urge
  • If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, people will think that you’re either mad or evil.
  • Getting other people to “keep their word” is a powerful way of controlling them.
  • People attach huge value to delivering on a plan - even more value than delivering something valuable!

3. We are after all NOT Professionals

• The Cynefin Framework
  • Simple - Journeymen (but does this kind of work really exist?)
  • Complicated - Craftsmen, Professionals
  • Complex - Consultants
  • Chaotic - Artists, Researchers, Philosophers
• To be Good at your Job, you must realise that you are not good at your job
  • Bullies, psychopaths and other senior management will try to trick you into thinking you should be good at your job, it makes you easier to manipulate
    
• What you CAN do, Reporting, Sorting, Counting and enabling the 3Ts (Talking, Thinking, Typing) a set of rules you CAN commit to
  • A clean, well-lighted place
  • This really isn’t rocket science
  • Stop trying

4. A Beautiful Mind and the Buckaroo Project (Junking your project for fun and profit - actually, misery and loss)

• Projects tend to get given work until they start to break
• Projects tend to have their resources stretched temporally and geographically until they start to break
• Most development teams start off broken, if you get them working, someone will break them
  • Table 2’s Butter Bean - if you prod it and play with it, it will die
• This is probably something to do with John Nash and equilibria

5. The Power of Negative Thinking

• Everyone (i.e. idiots) hates short-sellers
• What project management is not
  • No military metaphors please
  • "Trying hard", I mean, seriously, that's your "strategy."
    
  • Delivering value and discovering value vs delivering on a plan
• Level 0 people management
• The art of the possible
  • People in glass houses shouldn’t order custom-built windows
• Noticing things
  • Letting your petri dish go mouldy
  • Playing with the goo on the pressure chamber floor
  • Do you know funny thing about this angina drug?