Sunday, August 21, 2022

Agile & Lean as simple as possible


I have always found the process of distilling important concepts down to clear, well-understood slogans or sound bites to be very difficult.  Each audience of the idea and each person within the audience has a different context and a different meaning for the words or pictures you are trying to convey.  However, I think my friend Michael has published a clever, unambiguous insight that most of us can understand.  

The entire Agile Manifesto and agile fashion trend is trying to empower developers who are really "the means of intellectual property production and delivery" of an enterprise to execute efficiently and effectively.  Michael has formulated a single question and corollary that can enable anyone to improve.  To paraphrase Michael's single question:

Are you currently, with certainty, working on the single most-important thing you need to do to move your effort towards success?

If yes: good! Carry on!

If no: Is it (a) because you're distracted/impeded or (b) because you don't know what the most important thing is?

In case it's (a): removing the distraction or impediment is now the most important thing [you need to do]. In case it's (b): finding out about the most important thing is now the most important thing [you need to do]. Communication is key in both cases, that's knowing, finding, and involving the right people.

A similar analysis of this idea is in the book The One Thing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah... only, how to find that right people. Especilly among the crowd of Right people, of known quality. ;-P