Last week a routine job around the house turned on a light. The behavior in front of me was the same pattern I have watched in project management for more than a decade.
The first thought
A confession: I am an observer. I take in what is happening around me, find the pattern, and put it to work. One leadership lesson arrived with parenthood. That fact is both useful and appalling. I had assumed the professional world was full of grown-ups. Humor intended.
We were doing scheduled maintenance on a wood-burning stove — an experienced crew, a list, a plan. Five minutes from putting it back together and lighting it, the project changed. Parts that were not broken came off for a closer look. New fixes and add-ons entered the conversation. That is the “agile” style I have seen in company after company. I tried to bring the group back to the original list. Delivery was in the room. Daylight was going. The house was getting cold. The answer I got was the greater good.
Hashtags make people forget what they already paid to learn:
- In what they call Agile, the customer governs. The delivery body does not.
- Real agility costs money and time. It is not a free adjective.
- The life of any complex product can be cut into several simple waterfalls.
- There is no one-size-fits-all guide to success; otherwise, everyone would have bought, read, and implemented it.
Everything, including a project-management method, works in moderation.
The second thought
The same habit shows up in startups. A company chases the fashionable method, the scope never sits still, the product never ships, and the market does not wait. Cash runs down. A bolder competitor arrives. That is enough.
History is clear on the other half of this. Breakthroughs rarely belong to one person. They belong to a group, at the moment society is ready to use the thing. That is not permission to ship half a product. It is a reminder that trends are useful only in doses. Do not lose the actual tasks because the method is louder than the stove.
Light the stove. Then talk about the next feature.