Thanks for reading the 9th Agile Quick Links.
Shu-Ha-Ri comes from the Japanese Martial Art of Akido. Roughly speaking it equates to:
- Shu – learning the basics, repeating movements and following commands without questioning.
- Ha – breaking with tradition, finding exceptions, asking questions.
- Ri – transcendence – there are no longer individual techniques or practices, instead everything can flow.
This progression has often been used in the Agile Community to remind people not to question or alter the basic practices when they’re still learning to become Agile. (Thanks to Alistair Cockburn for introducing us to the idea in his book: Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game). Rachel Davies has recently come across some harmful uses of the idea and talks about them in: Shu-Ha-Ri Considered Harmful? I don’t entirely agree with Rachel but that will be the subject another blog post.
Mishkin Bertieg, Agile Trainer, has been creating OpenAgile a new Agile Methodology: Comparison of OpenAgile with Scrum.
Chris Matts and Olav Maassen (the Real Options guys), use a comic to explain how Real Options work with Blacl Sholes (hint they don’t). BTW to make sense of this comic you need to have a good understanding of Real Options.
En Francias: AGILE n’est pas un DOGME! – apparently there are still some trainers/coaches out there who think Agile is a religion. Sad.
Cory Foy writes two thought provoking pieces about the state of the Scrum Alliance: They Could Have Been Contenders and ..but if the Scrum Alliance Can’t Do It, Who Will?. I don’t know enough about the politics of the Scrum Alliance to comment on the first piece although I did write about this last year: “Opinion: Will the Scrum Alliance Change its Stripes?”. Frankly the first step will be more openness and transparency.
Finally David Bland has another piece on the misuse of Velocity in Scrum/Agile: Sizing Up the Enterprise.
Caveat Emptor – if you buy any of the books after clicking on my link I get 4% of the price. In all likelihood that means I might be able to afford a coffee or two.
Related posts:
Is ‘Shu, Ha, Ri’ harmful? That’s an interesting question.
I admit to not liking the expression. Partly, this is a gut reaction against anything that seems elitist. I don’t think that martial arts are elitist, but this term strikes me that way when used in a Scrum context.
Mostly, I think what bothers me about apply martial arts terminology to Scrum is that the purpose of martial arts is so very different from the purpose of Scrum.
Martial arts is about self development and self defense. I
Scrum is about getting work done.
Is ‘Shu, Ha, Ri’ harmful? That’s an interesting question.
I admit to not liking the expression. Partly, this is a gut reaction against anything that seems elitist. I don’t think that martial arts are elitist, but this term strikes me that way when used in a Scrum context.
Mostly, I think what bothers me about apply martial arts terminology to Scrum is that the purpose of martial arts is so very different from the purpose of Scrum.
Martial arts is about self development and self defense. It is oriented towards individual activity.
Scrum is about getting work done. It is oriented towards team activity.
These are very different things. I’d rather talk about Scrum in terms that make sense for it, and I don’t think that martial arts terminology is a good way to do that.
Kevin Thompson, Ph.D., PMP, CSP
Senior Instructor and Consultant, cPrime
http://www.cprime.com/training
Kevin – I think that far more gets read into this analogy than Alistair intended nearly 10 yrs ago now. It was only ever meant to remind people not to go tinkering too much until you really understood what was going on.
Personally I use other analogies but you could read too much into mine to. They’re just not as popular.
Cheers
Mark