In a recent post on the Agile Paradigm, I used sailing as an example. John Goodpasture provided a much better example that needs to be shared across the board.
Note several critical concepts that are sometimes lost in the question of self-actualization of the team members:
- Team work has a leader - the skipper
- The path to success is defined by the course or the destination. This path is guided by the physical obstacles in the way to the destination - either placed there intentionally or as part of the environment.
- Emergent situations are part of the normal process, but the solutions are constrained by the rules of the race or the physical rules of the boat and the sea.
- Everyone has a job, some are specialist, some are generalist, but everyone knows their job before stepping on the boat.
- The skipper is the leader.
- The team - crew- works as the crew, but they don't make things up as they go. Everyone is focused 100% on reaching the goal. For racing that is simple. For open ocean transist, that is reaching the distant port. For day sailing in Mission Bay, that is enjoying the day and trying not to get run over by the tourist in rental boats, for coastal sailing out of Newport Beach that is staying away from the power boats. Rarely if ever do we just sail blinding waiting for the destination to emerge.
- And like all real sports - we keep score.
And a final concept in the sailing analogy:
Agile development is not self-organizing. It is a highly structured, rules of engagement based, process, guided by the rules of the course and the sea. The emergent part comes when the conditions change and the crew and skipper have to respond. The notion of self-organization works great for children on the playground kicking the ball around. If you're spending other people's money, you're value is guided by strict rules of the game. Which us back to Disciplined Agile Delivery.
