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Before I dive into Part 3 on my series about Agile Process Overhead, I wanted to review where we are and interject a little wisdom around all of this.
You may recall that I had a client come to me with great concern (frustration?) about all the “overhead” in adopting Agile. Specifically, they wanted to address:
- What goes in the Sprint Backlog?
- How do you allocate your time effectively?
- How do you “plan” for unplanned work?
Each of these seemed to cause a lot of overhead for their ScrumMaster and the team. That confused me and so I decided to post some ideas about them. I addressed the first bullet in Part 1 of this series, and the second bullet in Part 2.
So let’s take a break before moving on to Part 3,: “How do you ‘plan’ for unplanned work?” Here is what I want to raise as a guiding mental model: the 5 Orders of Ignorance. This may appear to have nothing to do with the perceived process overhead with Agile. I think it has everything to do with it.
Where do the 5 Orders of Ignorance come from? Phillip G. Armour outlined these in his book The Laws of Software Process. (You can also find a quick outline of them in a 2000 Communications of the ACM Article.)
If we are looking at process overhead, I think applying the 5 Orders of Ignorance is great guidance:
- 0th Order Ignorance: Lack of Ignorance
- I (probably) know something
- 1st Order Ignorance: Lack of Knowledge
- I do not know something
- 2nd Order Ignorance: Lack of Awareness
- I do not know that I do not know something
- 3rd Order Ignorance: Lack of Process
- I do not know a (suitably effective) way to find out that I don’t know something
- 4th Order Ignorance: Meta-Ignorance
- I do not know about the 5 Orders of Ignorance
Where do you think the troubled team is in the 5 Orders of Ignorance when they are struggling with Agile Process Overhead in the guise of an overloaded Sprint Backlog, allocating team members, and planning for unplanned work? How do you think Agile and Lean approaches actually directly impact the 5 Orders of Ignorance? And, in so doing, can you see ways that, in attacking the 5 Orders of Ignorance, they directly impact costs to teams and organizations in a variety of domains?
Okay, next post I will complete Part 3 of our Agile Process Overhead series. And we’ll find out how Agile addresses these 5 Orders of Ignorance. Stay tuned!
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.
