Bulldozer00's Blog

At its core, process agility is all about continuous learning, fast feedback loops, and fluid changeability. Unlike pre-agile methods (and even some currently purported agile methods), which assume that people are forward-marching automatons who “better not make mistakes” and must defend the fort against all external forces of change, process agility accommodates the mental limitations and fallibility of REAL human beings.

Having said that, how agile do you think a process which includes a sign-off list like this is:

Imagine that whatever has been “approved” by a ceremonial sheet like this is post-facto found to be laced with errors, inconsistencies, and ambiguities due to natural human fallibility. How likely do you think that finders-of-mistakes will publicly point them out, demand a production line stoppage to fix the turds, and suggest that the director-manager-lead approval gauntlet be traversed again? Conversely, how likely do you think that finders-of-mistakes will say “f*ck-it!“, keep their mouths shut, and keep goose-stepping forward with the herd.

Fear not, dear reader. BD00 has a simple and clean solution to the director-manager-lead approval gauntlet problem. Collapse the list of approvers down to one – the only one that matters:

Please submit your plans for BD00 approval in the comments section. As his executive assistant, I can assure you that his stamp/no-stamp decision will be made pronto. However, don’t call us. We’ll call you.