What's ironic about this metaphor is that Agile's roots can be found in building construction. We all know the story of Toyota, but where did Toyota come up wit

What's ironic about this metaphor is that Agile's roots can be found in building construction. We all know the story of Toyota, but where did Toyota come up with the idea? From Japanese stone masons. The nature of building with stone is such that you never truly know what resources you have to work with. The shape, color, texture of stone is all variable. This means too that the way each component fits together is unpredictable. For the eye of a master builder, who constructs edifices with each relationship perfectly balanced, each component placed intentionally, who can see every step of the process and what each choice means for the integrity of the whole, such a craftsman understands that every day brings with it a whole new set of variable inputs, which can never be planned for, spec'ed out, or tasked to laborers who do not see the whole. Modern construction cares nothing for such craft. It will be the domain of robots. Software development too will follow this path, as we humans are suckers for predictability. But such a road will be littered with people suffering in jobs that make them feel like robots, projects that fall flat, and endless repeating boxes of sameness.