Alistair's call for an Oath of Non-Allegiance, re-posted by Jesse Fewell about
I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation.
Seems to be a call to come together on the processes of building software based products or services. Great idea. An idea worth pursuing. An idea that may have bookable value to the project management and software development communities.
But this call also seems to have no context or domain. It also seems to ignore to notion of current standard practices, past performance, established theory and established practice, and leaves the conversion open to very type of "cock-a-mamy" ideas that abound in the absence of a context, domain, principle, practice, and all the other guidance - that when ignored - and so times intentionally ignored - results in failure.
Here's a core issue.
How may ideas do we have time to consider? Every idea that comes in the door? EVERY idea? What are the qualification for being credible? Does an idea have to be feasible to be considered. Then credible? Given a project domain, with time, talent, and treasure - how many ideas are enough ideas to move forward?
What are the Measures of Performance (MoP) and Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) for these ideas?
- They've been shown to work before in similar contexts and domains?
- They have measure of effectiveness and measures of performance that are appropriate for the problem at hand?
- They have some basis in principles that are know to be effective in the current domain and context?
- When we say Best Suit the Current Situation, what are the measures of Best?
- Who defines Best?
There's a great quote from Gary Taubes, Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, where the governor of Utah, Norman Bangerter is presented information by Ian Cumming, a Regent of the University of Utah, about the supposed discovering of Cold Fusion, by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. Cumming was asking Bangerter for State money to further develop the concept of Cold Fusion and have the State of Utah share in the riches to come from free energy.
Bangerter to Cumming Knowing nothing about it, I'm highly optimistic
So What is Best Suited for the Current Situation Mean?
We likely need to answer some questions
- What is the situation?
- Are we managing a project?
- If so, what kind of project?
- Are we building a product?
- If so, hat kind of product?
- What is the purpose is this project?
- Who's money are we spending?
- Do we know our tolerance for risk?
So Knowing about it, I'm highly optimistic.
But in the absence of Knowing Nothing About It - How About Some Immutable Principe's of Projects?
I'd suggest here's a way to test the optimism of this Oath of Non-Allegiance. What ever the idea, from what ever school of thought, with what ever heritage this idea has, in the situation let's ask some simple - and possibly immutable questions.
- Do we have means to know what done looks like in some measurable form meaningful to the buyer?
- Can we put forward some tangible evidence that we're making progress?
- When we say we're making progress, can we point to physical deliverables that represent that progress?
- Can we discover, through some means, the risks that will be encountered along the way to this progress. And can we, through some means, continuously mitigate these risk, in some way to remove them from impacting our outcomes?
- Can we speak, in some clear, concise, and semantically logical way, about progress toward the "Done" state of the project, product, service, and deliverable resulting from our efforts.
