Moneyfall taming and other lost secrets of ancient ages

[vit_r]

I'm not a team player, I'm an afterplay cleaner.

Here is a quote from an old book originally published in 1982:

If anyone adjusts a stable process to try to compensate for a result that is undesirable, or for a result that is extra good, the output that follows will be worse than if he had left the process alone (attributable to William J. Latzko).

A common example is to take action on the basis of a defective item, or on complaint of a customer. The result of his efforts to improve future output (only doing his best) will be to double the variance of the output, or even to cause the system to explode. What is required for improvement is a fundamental change in the system, not tampering.

(W. Edwards Deming, "Out of the Crisis", page 327, chapter 11 "Common Causes and Special Cases".)

Do you recognize the agile management?

Note, from mathematical point of view an agile process generates statistically stable amount of random errors. Consequently, any attempt to manage an agile process can only cause an increase of error production.

PS: Yes, the word in the epigraph is placed there intentionally, but I'm not ready yet to write about the joy of having agile.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Yep.

Just an hour ago I was trying to convince a colleague that fixing bugs like Y2K does not need this Y2K to happen before we start fixing it. Have to have enough vision to prepare. But it's not what an agile is ready for, because, you know, priorities are set. By near-sighted half-idiots.

[vit_r]

The agile is not simply near-sighted. It is future-blind. The common causes (the faults of the system) simply do not exist for it. This is another universe and if you are trying to fix the system, you are doing nothing.

To be visible for an agile manager or an agile team you ought to follow the principle from the previous quote: "Mess it up, and correct it later, you become a hero."

[juan_gandhi]

Right. The next Y2K is 18 years ahead.