What Do Actors and Programmers Have in Common?

Casting Call This week, I had the pleasure of attending the seminar “The Way of Artful Making” presented by Rob Austin and Lee Devin , co-authors of the book “Artful Making”.

While I have met both gentlemen separately in the past and heard them both speak, this was one of those golden moments when I was able to hear them co-present. And for me, I loved the odd mixture in the audience: MBA students, MFA student actors, and software engineers. (Okay, guess which group I was in?)

Lee and Rob have a great “pairing” style in presenting. For those of you who don’t know them, Lee is a professor emeritus in Theatre from Swarthmore College. And Rob is a former associate professor at the Harvard Business School and is now full professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

In co-presenting, Lee and Rob take turns applying their perspectives about the look and feel of artful making. For Lee, this is about life in the theatre. For Rob, this is about great product development and, in particular, software development. So two great tastes that, as it turns out, taste great together (sorry, a reference to an old candy advertisement :)

So, what do actors and programmers have in common? Well, some amazingly fundamental things as it turns out:

Iterative work
Collaboration
Innovation

Theatre work and product development both thrive on iteration and collaboration. Lee described this in terms of rehearsal and the emergent look of a play leading up to and even after opening night. Rob affirmed the value of a collaborative and iterative approach in product development and provided videos from Boeing and Bang and Olufsen showing how both companies take advantage of this approach.

What do these practices have to do with innovation? Well in both theatre and product development, Lee and Rob encourage us to embrace what should be the glaringly obvious; that is, iteration and collaboration invariably produce innovation .

What happens when you put iterations and collaboration together? Rob introduced us to a term he had learned during his study of Boeing’s use of iterations: “try-storming”. That is, instead of just brainstorming ideas (whether in theatre or in product development), take your brainstorm and try it. Find something out about it as soon as possible. Then “try-storm” the next idea. (I think I am going to have to steal that term from him!)

I was also very fortunate to be able to sit next to Pete Behrens of Trail Ridge Consulting during the evening. Talking with him afterward, he reminded me of a few more similarities between theatre and product development:

You need to be able to surprise people in order to create value
If you don’t know in exact detail where you are going, it’s okay
The ideal play/product you hold in your head is very limiting; let go of it
In iterations, like rehearsals, each iteration may be or even will be significantly different from each other
We’ve been able to move to being more iterative these days, more Agile, because of technology making it cheap enough to iterate
Nothing is lost and wonders never cease as we build up each iteration from all the iterations before

Artful Making through iterations, collaboration and try-storming—all are important if you intend to be a theatre or product development organization that is truly innovative in the 21^st century. And THAT is what actors and programmers have in common.

About the Author: Jean Tabaka is a wine enthusiast, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.

Comments: [9] Comments >> Add a Comment