Anyone – Everything – Anytime
"I only have one life, so I want to have done it all!"
I'm free. I decide where I live. I decide what I want to do. I decide whether and which religion I belong to. I decide who I want to live with. I decide what to do with my time. I only have one life. What I do with it is my business. I want to travel. I want to visit remote places. I also want to visit the Grand Canyon once. I also want to go up to the Eiffel Tower, sky-dive, see a real lion in the wild. I decide when I bake a pizza or if and when I order it. It’s all about me, myself, and I. Everything is possible, everything has to be!
It is a conclusion that since I am free, I am allowed to do whatever I want with my own life. It is restricted where my desires interfere with someone else's freedom. The latter is consensus and a nice definition of the limits of one's own freedom.
In the free world, in the free states, there are appropriate legal systems that grant me this and in addition, the necessary state institutions and authorities, such as the police, are in-place and ensure that I can live out my rights.
The laws and regulations provide the framework, they regulate coexistence and protect my civil rights. Laws must be fair and must not discriminate against anyone. Depending on the issue, this is often not easy to implement. The more detailed a situation is, the more extensive and detailed are the laws that regulate the facts. Every little circumstance and special case must be regulated. Everything has to be covered. Citizens rely on the law and insure the remaining "problem areas": life insurance, accident insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, pension insurance, car insurance. The legally required insurances are setting an example, and the citizens are following suit. The expectation is to be able to live a fully comprehensive life. And if everything is insured and I follow all the rules, then nothing can happen to me. People are relying more and more blindly on it, or so it seems to me. Blind. Merciless. Brainless.
Rules don't have any grey areas in the first place, but when applied to reality, they are sometimes not that 100% clear. For example in road traffic, situations can easily arise in which, due to the timing, the speeds of road users and, above all, the unforeseen, situations can arise in which worse things can only be prevented by prudence, thinking, and looking ahead.
The other day around the corner from me:
A cyclist on a bike path. The cycle path is only symbolically separated from the sidewalk by a white line. In addition, there is a junction with a footpath that leads to a primary school. The cyclist at high speed, thanks to the electric motor and slope, 20 kg bike plus the weight of the rider, all at 20 km/h. In the morning, rush hour, many children, many parents, many cyclists, many pedestrians. It comes as it must, the e-bike rider overtakes other cyclists who are actually already going too fast. A child crosses the sidewalk and then the bike path and a collision occurs. The e-bike rider: "I was on the bike path. I'm allowed to drive so fast. And besides, I always follow all the rules anyway and wear a bike helmet."
WTF? Even on the cycle path, thinking and prudence are required. When the situation is so confusing, I can't blindly invoke my right to drive so fast. And adhering to the rules is a matter of course anyway and what please, does the bicycle helmet have to do with it, you +*#*#!
The law prescribes "adapted speed". And apart from that, no rule or law releases me from the obligation to drive prudently. But here we are again: laws have their framework of interpretation. More rules and laws will not help and cannot replace consideration and, above all, thinking. On the contrary, the more rules govern action, the more the impression seems to be created that all thinking has already been done. There is an expansion of the "I can do everything" to a "I can do anything, as long as I stick to the rules and then if something goes wrong, then the rules are not good, not right or not complete". People start relinquishing their own responsibility and shifting them to those who create the rules. Self-incapacitation as a justification for misconduct.
New EU rules for new passenger cars also remind me of this topic once again: various assistance systems are to become mandatory. Oh my god. Automatic Brake Assist, for example, which sometimes brakes excessively due to traffic signs and thus surprises and unsettles road users driving behind. I don't even want to think about what happens if a brake assist goes into action when the road is unfortunately a bit icy or slippery and the driver had actually deliberately just taken his foot off the accelerator instead of actual breaking in order to be able to continue to control the vehicle. Or inexperienced drivers who blindly trust Brake Assist and drive at excessive speed, assuming that the helper will brake the vehicle in time. This is not progress. These are increasingly expensive and heavier vehicles, which therefore make no economic and ecological sense.
The pattern repeats itself again and again: responsibility is relinquished, formally abandoned. "I play by the rules, that's all. End of announcement. If it doesn't work anymore, it's not my problem". It's so easy, so comfortable, so inconsiderate, so ignorant, so arrogant, so antisocial.
And what on earth does this have to do with "Agile Minds"? Let's look at the train of thought again: Many rules lead to the assumption that everything has already been thought through. The individual switches off his brain and relies blindly and only on the rules.
So, according to this theory, how do many rules affect the members of a team and their software development process? Do they lead to more thinking and taking responsibility? To real teamwork and collaboration? I don't think so. Unfortunately, quite the opposite is true. Modern agile process models and frameworks such as Scrum are just that: frameworks! No rigid and overflowing sets of rules. The Scrum Guide does not contain instructions on how to act for every eventuality and every organizational edge case. It is a framework that focuses on the team's personal responsibility and self-organization and is intended to promote it. The team has to think for itself. One for all and all for one. "I checked in the code after all, so I can call it a day" no longer exists in this world. The naïve thinking, "I'll play by the rules, so everything will be fine" is a thing of the past.
In this sense, it is also high time that an agile mindset moves into everyone's minds in our society.