All That Jazz!

Michael Aucoin, D. Engr., PE, PMP is president of Leading Edge Management, LLC in College Station, Texas and author of Right-Brain Project Management: A Complementary Approach. He can be reached at [email protected].

  Agile  

In the spring of 1959, Miles Davis brought his band into the studio to record Kind of Blue. It was destined to become his magnum opus and the biggest-selling jazz album in history, a recording that would influence music for decades to come. Musical acts almost always rehearse at length before recording tracks. This was not the case with Kind of Blue--as musicians arrived at the studio for the recording, Davis gave them only a sketchy framework in their sheet music. His intent was for a fresh approach to improvisation.

Does this sound at all like your agile project? If so, you and your team deserve kudos, because you are on the right track. Of all the metaphors one could imagine for an agile project, perhaps the best fit is the jazz performance. With the balance of rules and experimentation, jazz represents the tension, balance and compromises that comprise the agile project. They both represent the “sketchy outline” and the magical and paradoxical experience of improvisation.

There is a hidden truth in both the agile project and the jazz performance. While it is evident that there is experimentation in the music or in the project domain, it is perhaps more important to recognize the social improvisation that also must take place.

Any human endeavor that involves a group brings with it a set of complex relationships and interactions--a social framework…

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