I was surfing some presentations looking for good layout ideas, when I came across a Jazz - A Metaphor for Agile Management. I'm not a real jazz fan, but I do enjoy certain artist. Sitting in the Chautauqua, performance hall last week for the Brahmas 1st Piano Concerto and thinking about Jazz as a management metaphor, I'm struck by several things:
- How many players can you have in the performance before you need a conductor?
- If I want to perform the 1st Piano Concerto, can it be done without a conductor, individual section music?
- Of course the pianist, Peter Serkin, played without music, but he "knows" the piece inside outside. The orchestra struggled a bit since they had only rehearsed for two days.
- When you listen to the penultimate performance, I would guess it was rehearsed many dozens of times, Ashkenazy, and Haitink studied the piece and the orchestration for months if not years, and were both at the peak of their performance capabilities before laying down the tracks.
Finally:
- When the metaphor is applied to software development, are there people (the customer) willing to pay others (the developers) to improvise in the way some Jazz groups do?
- At what point does "spending other peoples money" need oversight in the same way the orchestra needs a conductor.
- What are the limits to the size and complexity of the music or the software that requires external oversight - project management or a conductor.
- What is the customer doesn't like Jazz?
