There Goes The Chasm
I love it when luminaries in the industry start questioning things. JK passed this one on to me this morning. In the post, Alistair Cockburn describes how he facilitated a work session without yellow sticky notes *gasp*. He used mind-map software instead and apparently it worked great.
He goes on to tell of how when he tried to share his experience with others, he was lectured by the Agilista about how yellow sticky notes are the only true way. Of his admonishers, Cockburn says:
Not that they’ve tried it, just that they’ve locked onto the opinion that yellow post-its are superior to everything else, and therefore to be used on all occasions.
But Cockburn goes on to talk about the bigger picture and the real problem.
I wouldn’t write about this if it was just post-its vs electronic capture. It is more general than that. I see my agile colleagues throwing their personal course-curriculum at clients rather than try to solve the clients problems; throwing Scrum training at them rather than …; throwing agile-in-general at them …; throwing 2-week iterations at them …; in general not thinking about what the client is ailing from before spouting generic agile rhetoric at them and lobbying agile-fad-of-the-day would-be solutions at them.
I wonder if comments like this from people the likes of Cockburn mean post-agilism and pliancy are crossing the chasm?