How Bruce Lee can save the agile movement...

I grew up in West Africa (Cote d'Ivoire) and remember eagerly awaiting for Bruce Lee's movies to be shown at local movie theaters. I particularly remember a scene out of the movie "Enter the Dragon" when Bruce Lee is mentoring his young pupil. Right there, he taught his student, a little bit of wisdom that, to this day, I still use:

"Do not look at the finger pointing to the moon or you will miss the heavenly glory..."

See that memorable scene for yourself before I explain how that has anything to do with software engineering and agile development.

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) days

Fast forward to the 90's... I am in the graduate computer science program at Carnegie Mellon University listening to a lecture by the late Watts S. Humphrey. While at the Software Engineering Institute, Watts Humphrey created the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). That seminal piece of work would eventually turned into the CMMi. Of course, the CMMi is now often decried by its detractors as the reason why many software processes are overly formal, focusing more on producing comprehensive documentation rather than working code. Interestingly, that is not what I remember from Watts Humphrey's lectures. It is rather the opposite.

It's all about the intent

You see one of the bravest of my cohorts (as I recall, Watts Humphrey could be a bit intimidating...) challenged Mr. Humphrey as we could all see that implementing all of the CMM key process areas seemed too onerous, especially in the 12-month studio project that graduate students had to work on. Watts Humphrey calmly replied that we were missing the point of the CMM and that he was not advocating for how to implement any of the key process area as that was up to us. I have the distinct memory of him saying something to the effect of:

"Focus on the intent of the process area. You can decide on the exact process that fits your organization as long as you meet the intent of the process area."

You see, this was telling us don't look at the finger...but rather look at what the finger is pointing to.

Agile disciplines run the risk of missing the original intent

Agile disciplines such as Scrum have been widely adopted by the software development community because they directly answered the reproach made by developers who had suffered while writing endless design documents instead of writing working code or following rigid processes instead of natural collaborations with fellow developers. The other advantage of Scrum is that it is somewhat simple but yet prescriptive enough (roles, scrum ceremonies...) that almost anyone can figure it out. Nevertheless, the commercialization of "Agile", the appearance of process gurus, the advent of mass training and costly certifications, the multitude of developers and trainers who "already know it but have never done it", all that creates the risk of making us miss, once again, the intent of a very good idea.

Throwing the baby with the bath water

I do see the specter of unnecessary formality showing up again. For example, Scrum retrospectives can easily become wasteful formalities. Developers will meet and rehash the same things for a whole hour because the "ceremony" was scheduled for an hour. I am afraid that it won't be too long before someone advocates for a retrospective for the retrospective. The risk that we run is that impulsive developers tend to "throw the baby with the bath water."

Finding the middle-way between control and natural instinct

We must find a way to combine prescriptive guidance about software development processes (control) with the ability to chose and modify these processes freely (natural instinct).

Combine prescriptive guidance about software development processes (control) with the ability to chose and modify these processes freely (natural instinct).

I strongly believe that the key to maintaining that balance is to focus on the intent of things that is guiding us. The best software development organizations have no shame in both advocating for a disciplined process while striving to dismantle them.

In the end maybe we can take another lesson from Bruce Lee.

Enjoy: