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This is probably one of the hardest things for many companies to grasp today. One of the things I do for a living is give full-day presentations to companies lo

by Ovid 13y ago

This is probably one of the hardest things for many companies to grasp today. One of the things I do for a living is give full-day presentations to companies looking at Agile from a "strategic" position. In short, companies often do agile development, but they still lay down hard deadlines, micro-manage projects, and provide command-and-control rather than support-and-deliver. This problem is the elephant in the room of agile: what do we do with managers when we have self-directed teams? If you look at the Feudal era (this is a gross oversimplification and varies wildly from from country to country), we had a king who gave land/authority to dukes, who gave land/authority to barons, who gave land/authority to knights, who had serfs work their fiefs. In return, the serfs had a place to live and gave food and goods to the knights, who pledged service to their liege, who pledged service to theirs, up to the king. The king also taxed every level of this and made orders of magnitude more money than the serfs. There were a couple of interesting side-effects of this. First, while you were technically loyal to your king, he didn't have much day-to-day impact and your loyalty was to those immediately surrounding you. Communication throughout the realm was slow or non-existent, further isolating communities. Politics were local, not national, and these made made medieval intrigues all the more fascinating. Second, there were no price signals inside of a feudal society. As a result, you couldn't have a functioning economy in the modern sense. And then about 300 years ago we had more and more international trade and many lords discovered that by displacing their peasants/serfs they could do things such as raise sheep and sell the wool for a far greater profit than having people harvesting food[1]. So you wound up with a bunch of free men traveling the land, selling their services where they could. In other words, you had one of the foundations to a modern economy: a mobile labor force. Today, that feudal model still exists: inside of many large corporations. It's a mess of internal politics. People have loyalty to their teams and maybe their boss, but not so much to Steve Ballmer. There are few, if any, internal price signals. Internally. If you commit "treason" by suggesting Ballmer should be fired, you might get laid off, but not executed. You have hiring and firing instead of births and deaths to maintain the work force. In may respects, the modern corporation resembles the old feudal system, but sped up many times. And the king/CEO still earns orders of magnitude more money than the workers/serfs, completely out of proportion to actual value provided. Agile itself had its roots back in the 50s, but as a modern movement in programming, agile is still just over a decade old. We don't know what's happening to the traditional role of management, but the feudal system couldn't compete with capitalism. I don't think that traditional corporations can, either. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#Enclosures_and_the_transition_from_feudalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#Enclosure... Edit: A couple of tiny clarifications.

pinaceae 13y ago
when shit hits the fan and you need a synchronized effort by many to reach a common goal, the hierarchical organization is the best. proven over thousands of years of human development. past a certain size these hierarchies do not work, hence you break them down and then let them compete against each other. look outside of software and see how humans have organised, what has worked and what not. the modern army is a great test bed for any form of team effort, they try out everything in large, controlled samples. one of the few organisations where management is a distinct set of skills you need to prove to have (officers, NCO, etc.). strategy comes from the top, defines the goals, objectives. smaller teams then take those goals and have freedom to execute against them - but only in the how, not the when. orchestration, synchronization of those teams is management, pure and simple. leading by objectives. then measuring the outcomes and defining what to do better the next time, executed in AARs (after action reviews). making sure the right things are done at the right time. removing obstacles, managing resources (hiring, etc.) - all of that is management. capitalist societies still have management as well, it's called government, selected representatives to manage a country. difference to feudalism is rule of law and a process to elect people in the ruling structure.
- Ovid 13y ago
  I'm happy you used the military as an example because I'm talking about markets. A military is precisely the place where a command-and-control structure is paramount. They do not have, and should not have "price signals" directing what they do. Their goals and motivations are entirely distinct from a profit-driven corporation. I think we should all feel grateful for that :) Edit: as an aside, I did have a military analogy in my talk at one point and I used guerrilla warfare as the classic example of where a smaller force, with fewer resources, can take on a larger, well-organized force. In some ways guerrilla warfare can resemble Agile, but though I loved the analogy, I cut it from my training because it felt like too much of a stretch.
  - lymie 13y ago
    If you want to know more about how the command and control structures of the military align with and compare to modern capitalism you can read up on "Creative Destruction"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction) for a 1000 foot view of capitalism in general, but more importantly you should research the ways in which the unique brand of capitalism expressed by massive American conglomerations stifle competition. There is a wealth of information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy) about how the militaristic, "Grow and Destroy" mentality undermines traditional competition in capitalism and stems from the military model of management. Command and Control and Grow and Destroy capitalism is, in a sense, the antithesis of real capitalism which requires competition to function.

by Ovid 13y ago

pinaceae 13y ago

when shit hits the fan and you need a synchronized effort by many to reach a common goal, the hierarchical organization is the best. proven over thousands of years of human development. past a certain size these hierarchies do not work, hence you break them down and then let them compete against each other. look outside of software and see how humans have organised, what has worked and what not. the modern army is a great test bed for any form of team effort, they try out everything in large, controlled samples. one of the few organisations where management is a distinct set of skills you need to prove to have (officers, NCO, etc.). strategy comes from the top, defines the goals, objectives. smaller teams then take those goals and have freedom to execute against them - but only in the how, not the when. orchestration, synchronization of those teams is management, pure and simple. leading by objectives. then measuring the outcomes and defining what to do better the next time, executed in AARs (after action reviews). making sure the right things are done at the right time. removing obstacles, managing resources (hiring, etc.) - all of that is management. capitalist societies still have management as well, it's called government, selected representatives to manage a country. difference to feudalism is rule of law and a process to elect people in the ruling structure.

Ovid 13y ago
I'm happy you used the military as an example because I'm talking about markets. A military is precisely the place where a command-and-control structure is paramount. They do not have, and should not have "price signals" directing what they do. Their goals and motivations are entirely distinct from a profit-driven corporation. I think we should all feel grateful for that :) Edit: as an aside, I did have a military analogy in my talk at one point and I used guerrilla warfare as the classic example of where a smaller force, with fewer resources, can take on a larger, well-organized force. In some ways guerrilla warfare can resemble Agile, but though I loved the analogy, I cut it from my training because it felt like too much of a stretch.
- lymie 13y ago
  If you want to know more about how the command and control structures of the military align with and compare to modern capitalism you can read up on "Creative Destruction"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction) for a 1000 foot view of capitalism in general, but more importantly you should research the ways in which the unique brand of capitalism expressed by massive American conglomerations stifle competition. There is a wealth of information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy) about how the militaristic, "Grow and Destroy" mentality undermines traditional competition in capitalism and stems from the military model of management. Command and Control and Grow and Destroy capitalism is, in a sense, the antithesis of real capitalism which requires competition to function.