Let Go!

July 27, 2013 at 2:13 am | Posted in Blogroll, Out of my mind, Scrum and agile | 1 Comment

Have you ever been on a group tour? Everything is planned to the last detail, and executed meticulously. Totally expected, no surprises.

I hesitate to go on such tours. I prefer family tours, where there is a lot more flexibility. You can choose when to get up, where to eat. May be cancel some planned activity and just relax walking around the neighbourhood.

All of us have an internal compass. It takes us in the right direction, at least metaphorically, if not literally. More we trust our compass, more will be the surprises.

As a child we all have gone on a treasure hunt, some of us still do. There is no map to take us to the treasure. Just a few pointers. Even those we don’t have all when we start. When we reach one milestone, we get the next clue. It has lot more adventure and fun.

Isn’t agile software development similar? We go to the end of one sprint, have the satisfaction of achieving “Done”, show to others what we have done and get feedback; our clues to the next milestone. We have our product vision and a broad roadmap. That is our compass. It will keep us in the right direction.

When we get comfortable with our internal compass and trust forces beyond us, an external compass called destiny comes into play. Instead of remaining passive puppets in the hands of destiny, we actively embrace it.

Columbus trusted his internal compass and took to uncharted seas to reach India. The destiny had other plans. Fortunately, Columbus did not have Google maps and the GPS. Otherwise US would have remained undiscovered to the rest of the world.