“Unfortunately, in many cases, the rule book goes way too far – it tries to tell people how to be instead of explaining what we’re trying to do.. We need recipes, not rules.”
― Howard Behar
More rules. Isn’t that what happens in a lot of organizations, the creation of more rules, more rules to follow and adhere to. After a while you don’t even know all the rules and just trying to follow the rules takes more effort and time than the work you are supposed to be doing. Software development methods can evolve to a huge number of rules that have to be followed, so much so that a programmer’s productivity falls.
The rules are there to help reduce error and integrate what was learned over time so mistakes are not repeated. We learn and we add rules, learn some more and add some rules. At some point we have rules that have been followed and no one really understands why the rules are in place. It is easier to follow a rule than to challenge the rule or to even be aware that some rules do need to be challenged.
Instead of rules we need to be focused on the intention of the work we are doing. What is it we are trying to accomplish and to think about it with a new mind.
What happens when a culture gets rule bound? It is focused on following rules rather than trying to focus on the intention of the organization and it limits the potential of the organization.
When you think of the Agile manifesto and responding to change over following a plan the idea might be to focus on the intention of the work rather than following a lot of rules. If we can focus on what needs to be done perhaps more can get done. An organizational culture that is rules filled will be challenged by methods that believe fewer rules are better.
What is your organizational culture like? Is it filled with rules or filled with opportunity?
Thinking about Agile 