Are There Warring Tribes at Your Organization?
Over at Dr. Dobb’s, Tim Low uses the metaphor of a “jungle” to describe the current state of application development and likens the tension of competing management methods to warring tribes. For those familiar with these issues, Low’s description of how the “Waterfall tribe” has fallen out of favor with the “Chiefs” and replaced by the much more mysterious “Scrummies” will be an amusing read. And though the article is intended to be humorous, there’s plenty of insight in his extended metaphor.
Certainly, development in today’s rapidly evolving can be quite chaotic, even subject to occasional spikes in influence with management frameworks like Scrum. In other words, “it’s a jungle out there.” And—as I’m sure many readers can attest—developers tend to have strong feelings about which management strategies work and which ones don’t. Many would gladly do battle with those co-workers who disagree with their perspective.
But my favorite part of Low’s article is his description of Scrummies living on an island. Not only does this allude to the fact that Scrum teams self-organize and complete their work in relative seclusion from the managers and stakeholders, but it also gets at how truly different Scrum is from more traditional project management practices. In other words, Scrum’s not even in the jungle! Part of this separation has to do with Scrum’s unique terminology and processes, but I’d wager that the island metaphor also has to do with perceived mysteriousness on the part of traditional managers. Because Scrum demands development teams break from traditional management strategies and truly reorient their mindsets to embrace agile’s values, it can seem like another world altogether.
You can read the post in its entirety here.
