So I had the privilege of doing some introductory Agile training yesterday with some graduates. At the end of the session I just had some time to try out a new exercise that I’m prototyping.
I get people in pairs to write the following words and phrases on post-its (when I’m comfortable that I’ve got the words right, or more right, I’ll print them on cards).
Vague
All
Precise
Incomplete
Some
Total
Partial
Matching
To-Budget
On-time
Different
Differing
Same
Secure
Over-Budget
Complete
Inaccurate
Accurate
Late
Clear
Insecure
Imprecise
Then I asked the groups to sort them into two groups - to sort the words that go together.
This results in something very like these two groupings
All Some
Complete Incomplete
Clear Vague
Same Different
On-time Late
Total Partial
Precise Imprecise
To-Budget Over-Budget
Matching Differing
Accurate Inaccurate
Secure Insecure
Then I asked them to look at the Agile manifesto and a description of Scrum and see which group it would go in. Sadly that instruction was a bit vague and the grads struggled with it. I need to work on that part of the exercise - maybe by printing extracts from the Agile manifesto and the Scrum Guide on a separate set of cards.
Finally I asked them to read each of these lists, which list seems more attractive? Do I even have to ask? Surely everyone likes the list on the left more than the list on the right? Right?
Why? What do you feel as you read the list on the left? When I read the list on the left I feel lighter, happier, more relaxed, more open.
What you do you feel when you read the list on the right? When I read the list on the right I can feel the muscles in my shoulders that are somehow connected to reponsibilty starting to knot. I can feel a frown appearing on my face. As I read over “different, late, partial” I can feed my head and shoulders lowering.
And this is a really big problem if you work have anything to do with the management of projects. Why? Well because project management is about taking ideas and making them into reality. Ideas are almost always expressed using the kinds of words in the left-hand column. But reality is about dealing with the words in the right-hand column. It’s even weirder than that. Because in general, things that make money for an organisation will probably be, at least at first, best described by the words on the left.
I don’t have many answers for this at the moment. I’m just starting to get my hear around the problem. But my thinking is that if we could possibly come up with a better way of talking about partial, imperfect, vague but valuable things. That might be a help. But maybe language isn’t enough. Maybe we need practices, rehtoric and culture that celebrates, relishes and values these things. I dunno, I’ve started to write about it in my book “Delivering the Impossible”. But it’s still somewhat vague and partial. Notice how unattractive that sounds?