Two Agile Manifesto Co-Authors on a Couch
Jon Kern was passing through Munich when Alistair Cockburn was teaching there. Someone wise decided to seize the opportunity and get them both on a couch for an interview. I listened to the full interview, and there were some great insights I wanted to highlight.
I want to stress, I will be just posting some interesting tidbits, and they can’t do the full interview justice. I just wanted tease the interview you a bit and hopefully you’ll consider listening to the entire interview.
On the Differences Between Agile in Europe and the US
“The spirit [of Agile] seems to grow the further away we are from the US with like Agile. When you go to let’s say Romania, Serbia, or India, it seems to be more original, more I think old-school. Europe might be somewhere in between. It’s hard to say but a lot of stuff seems old hat in the US. - Jon Kern”
Talking About What Happened after the Agile Manifesto
“After the beginning, we did our thing [the Agile Manifesto], I felt awesome like we unleashed freedom for millions, and then all kinds of commercial capital considerations took over, we’re back to where we were fighting some giant like large process thing. If you want to get rid of the process, you want the manifesto, but somehow it’s back again, but it seems less so in other countries that might not be as polluted as we are with too many certificates.” - Jon Kern
On the Essence of Agile
“Agile is about uncovering bad news early. That’s why you do the early probes, early deliveries, early access to expert users. Bad news to your boss as soon as possible.” - Alistair Cockburn
On Too Many Rules for Projects
“It’s very easy to over constrain a project so it can’t succeed. People think that as they add more rules they’re actually increasing project safety, but every time they add a rule they actually decrease project safety. There’s a moment when you’ve added enough [rules] that literally there’s no way to win. - Alistair Cockburn
On the Success of the Agile Manifesto
There’s a quote going around on the internet. Your brilliant idea will either be misquoted and misused OR it will be ignored. You don’t get to choose which of the two.” - Alistair Cockburn
Anyhow, there were many more interesting parts, but I hope this will convince you it’s well worth a listen. Another thing which I found interesting was that they talked about Agile Transformations never, yes never, seeming to succeed at big companies.
Have a lovely Sunday, I'm off to have my coffee now! :)