AgileTHIS

I keep coming back to Doug DeCarlo’s book eXtreme Project Management from time to time. It’s a little discussed book and in my oppinion it deserves to be on every project managers or Agile coach’s table. I have kept it with me as a source of inspiration for the last five years or so. Lately I have revisited the book to find a basis for explaining why some organisations fail when trying to do Agile development and I think that Doug DeCarlos idea of two world views could explain it all.

The Newtonian world View

• Stability is the norm
• The world is linear and predictable
• It’s controllable
• We can minimize change
• Increase rigor to increase security & probability of success

The Quantum Worldview

• Change is the norm
• Uncertainty reigns
• Look for reasons to change
• Relax controls to increase security & probability of success

Most large organisations I have worked with tend to have a Newtonian world view and an Agile adoption more or less requires a Quantum world view. So adopting an Agile way of working is not just about new methods and processes, it has a lot to do with changing your way of thinking. This causes a lot of stress, or cognitive dissonance, on an organisation and it’s individuals. What I typically see happening is that organisations try to pick the cherries out of the Scrum/Agile pie without realizing that they are mixing world views — just because cherries are great in pies doesn’t mean that they work equally well in a french onion soup.

I use the world views to explain some of the difficulties ancountered in an Agile adoption as well as a tool for myself to identify problems and solutions. If a problem originiates from a certain world view I believe that the solution should come from the same.