Iterations - Short and Long
In traditional martial arts there are three belt colors to show rank: white, brown, and black.
New students wear a white belt and are told it is bad luck to wash their belt. The more they practice, the dirtier it gets until the belt is brown. As they continue to practice, their hard work is reflected in a belt that has become so weathered by practice it is black. Still, the student practices and their belt begins to fray at the edges, revealing the white threads within. Even at the rank of black belt, the master knows there is much more to learn. There will be times when he or she is again a student learning from a master.
We are immersed in a culture of speed. Faster. Better. Cheaper. But mostly faster. Impatience, it seems, is yet another unbearable discomfort. Something to be avoided at almost all cost and when it can't, someone or something must be found to be blamed. We expect deliveries in thirty minutes, nothing but green lights, and fully stocked shelves when we run our errands. Thirty one minutes? Red lights? Out-of-stock items? Someone must be blamed and paid with our wrath!
Even with important matters, as a culture, we are impatient for results and demonstrations of progress. A fact reflected in many martial arts schools that now offer a full rainbow of belt colors and pretty patches so students can display incremental progress and status. Promotions happen in weeks, not years. The dojo I attended for 25 years (where I was a white belt for 2+ years) resisted this trend, but I understand they have since acquiesced to the pressure. I could go on about how this particular change reflects an unhelpful shift from internal to external focus, but that's for another day.
Robustness is progress without impatience. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The microcosm of technical work isn't immune to the outside world's appetite for speed and demonstrated progress. A clear line of sight through the foggy canyon between what management wants and what knowledge workers can deliver is as ephemeral as ever. We showed them the knobs and dials on the Agile black box and may even have done a good job of explaining how they work. But old habits and deep seated fears often take hold. When that does, decision-makers can't resist the urge make decisions. So they pull the knobs and crank the dials. "Faster!" they say. "Yeah, Agile! I can see the progress! Now I want more faster! Faster!"
Then silly things start to manifest. Two week sprints are compressed to one week, then five days, then three days. All while carrying along the now cumbersome baggage of sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives. The blight of excessive meetings emerges once again.
I press my teams to go in the other direction. And by this I mean when they can demonstrate they have internalized all aspects of what it means to "sprint" then I start to extend the duration of sprints. My mental road map for when a team can do this is on an extended time frame and, yes, it's an iterative process. There are no multicolored belt ranks in my road map. No partial credit for getting some of it right some of the time. My job is to make the team so damn good they no longer need me. Not just for their benefit, but for mine, too. Babysitting a mediocre team for months or years sounds like a knowledge worker's version of hell.
Mastery in anything is acquired by a guided combination of both short and long-term iterations of deliberate practice followed by critical reflection.
Patience is the companion of wisdom. - Saint Augustine
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay