High Priests of Agile?

December 12th, 2007 · No Comments · Corporate Culture (or not)

There is currently a debate raging in the geospatial industry about whether or not neography is “real” GIS. For those of you not in the industry, Wikipedia defines neogeography “as a set of techniques and tools that fall outside the realm of traditional GIS, Geographic Information Systems. Where historically a professional cartographer might use ArcGIS, talk of Mercator versus Mollweide projections, and resolve land area disputes, a neogeographer uses a mapping API like Google Maps, talks about GPX versus KML, and geotags his photos to make a map of his summer vacation. Essentially, Neogeography is about people using and creating their own maps, on their own terms and by combining elements of an existing toolset.”

I refuse to be drawn into the debate about neography versus real GIS because it is a non-issue. Technology is taking us to lots of new places and I think broadening our horizons and sharing GIS with “the rest of the world” is a great thing. Those who want to draw divisions about whether or not something is “real” GIS are falling into what I call the High Priest Syndrome. They want to use semantics, strict definitions, and a dogmatic view of their area of expertise to separate themselves from the “commoners”. I find this highly divisive and extremely counter productive. Sharing and expanding horizons with newcomers to our field often brings exciting insight and fresh ideas to sometimes stagnant viewpoints about what’s possible. (OK, so maybe I finally gave an opinion on this matter and have indeed been drawn into the argument…but that’s the end of that!).

I think we see this in the agile world as well. I believe that many individuals get so hung up on using the “correct” terminology for certain agile practices (especially in Scrum) that they alienate newcomers to the agile world. There are many people who believe that you have to keep to a strict adherence of Scrum definitions to be “doing Scrum”: if you’re not doing everything Scrum says to do, you’re not doing Scrum. I think this too falls under the High Priest Syndrome category.

The beauty of agile practices like Scrum is their flexibility…you know…inspect and adapt. We need to constantly inspect and adapt our practices to make our team as efficient and effective as possible. I say this with one caveat: Don’t inspect and adapt back to waterfall, or as Jean Tabaka calls it “Reverting to form”.

I was very glad to hear many of the speakers at the recent Agile Development Practices Conference last week echo this sentiment. From Mary Poppendieck, Esther Derby, James Coplien and especially Andy Hunt, the message was clear: “Don’t be dogmatic about your agile practices”. Andy said it very bluntly in his closing keynote and Mary said it in her opening keynote. Mary really hammered it home by saying “Stop following best practices! Create your own best practices and become a leader”.

So, before I ramble and rant too much more on this topic, let me say this: The next time you see blog posts or articles that draw you into counter productive arguments about whether or not you are agile, or whether or not you are doing Scrum, do what Dave Bouwman has recommended…IGNORE THEM. Use your own judgement…you know what’s best for your team. My best advice is to inspect and adapt frequently…to the situation at hand. And remember, what worked for you last time may not work in the future, so don’t rely on what may become your own agile dogma.