RallyDev.com
Fri 23 Jan 2009
Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid – Eat the Cereal!
I was passing by my colleague’s desk yesterday while wandering around taking photos at work (more on that in another post.) Erin Rae loves to snack as she works. I already knew that. However, it was only after I uploaded the photos from my camera that I realized that Erin had some pretty interesting snack food right there in the photo. Why am I writing about Erin’s snacking habits?
Because very often when we are adopting Agile development, it can seem something like drinking the Kool-aid.
When I go into organizations to talk about Agile, I may often come across as being a bit to evangelistic, perhaps altruistic, about Agile. That is not my intent. And so I have been trying to pay attention to that. Also, Agile is not always the appropriate message (or in Erin’s case “snack”) for your audience.
Erin snacks with "Go Lean" cereal
Talking about Agile to executives can be like feeding turkey to your family on Thanksgiving; it puts everyone into a sleepy stupor.
What has been more useful for these discussions is talking about going Lean. Through Lean, I am able to tap into discussions about waste versus value. I can engage the executive team into looking at their entire organization. And, these “seeing the whole” discussions help them then understand why they should care about an engineering groups adoption of Agile.
Now it is no longer about just drinking the Agile Kool-aid. It is about following Erin’s example and learning to eat the Lean cereal. Bon appetit!
Further Reading:
- Scaling Lean and Agile Development – Ask Bas and Craig
- Q&A: Creating Leaner, Meaner and Faster Product Development
- My Leaning Bookshelf – 18 Books That Are Influencing My Lean Learning Path
Nice comparison between kool aid and Agile. loved it :)
Well, sometimes people really do think they are being told to “just drink the kool-aid” when they are urged to consider an Agile software development approach. The sad news is that these attitudes can be self-fulfilling. Avoiding the “kool-aid” stupor outcome usually requires a real Agile evangelist and coach with knowledge and passion and “stickiness.” Glad you liked the post in any case!
[...] a comment » In her recent post Stop Drinking the Kool-aid – Eat the Cereal!, colleague and friend Jean Tabaka gives an interesting metaphor for iteracting with executives [...]