Can Agile Frameworks Inhibit Your Agility?

That Bacon Guy

The featured image of bacon, I admit, is sorta click bait for many people. Because it’s, well, bacon! But there is a connection.

Many people will have heard of The Six Degrees of Separation. Back in my day it was popular to do this with Kevin Bacon. You would play this game by picking any actor and then trying to link that person to Kevin Bacon based on who they worked with in films. The game was to identify the films & actors linking your actor to Kevin. The number of actors between your person and Kevin was called the “Bacon Number”.

At some point I think people started saying that every actor was separated by, at most, 6 people from having worked directly with Kevin Bacon. Thus the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Similar to the Six Degrees of Separation from you to any other person on Earth.

So there, the bacon/Bacon connection.

Our Highest Priority is to Satisfy the Customer

I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere before…

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. — Agile Manifesto

Indeed I have, many times in fact. Let’s explore my theory that frameworks might hinder satisfying this priority.

A Childhood Game Remembered

Do you remember playing the Telephone Game? Perhaps as a child or in an Agile introductory class?

1. The first person whispers a phrase or short story to the 2nd person.
2. The 2nd person then whispers the same phrase or story to the next person.
3. This process continues, repeating the whisper down the line until you reach the last person.
4. That person then says out loud what they heard.
5. The first person then says what they told the 2nd person.
6. Vary the game with more and fewer people.