Sep 20, 2005 / Personal Transformation and Agile Development Adoption

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The article worth to read. Why many people don't try new things, make so many mistakes and solve wrong problems. The article talks about three important dysfunctions of our culture: fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness. Some symptoms:

Fragmentation:

• "We eventually become convinced that knowledge is accumulated bits of information and that learning has little to do with our capacity for effective action"
• "Fragmentation results in "walls" that separate different functions into independent and often warring fiefdoms"

Competition

• "We continually think in terms of war and sports analogies when we interpret management challenges. We need to "beat the competition," "overcome resistance to our new program," "squeeze concessions from the labor union," or "take over this new market." "
• "Fascinated with competition, we often find ourselves competing with the very people with whom we need to collaborate. "
• "The quick-fix mentality also makes us "system blind." Many of today's problems come from yesterday's solutions, and many of today's solutions will be tomorrow's problems. "

Reactiveness

• "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
• " Many managers think that management is problem solving. But problem solving is not creating. The problem solver tries to make something go away. A creator tries to bring something new into being."

These are the roots of many problems with adoption of agile development practices. People should change to accept agile development, managers should change, customers should change. This is hard and lengthy process. What can we do with it?

posted by Michael Dubakov @ 7:50 AM