All you Scrum approaches look alike...

 

For you whippersnappers who believe Agile and Scrum represent a natural progression of traditional project management, you need to know about one Marlin Perkins. Marlin was the host of the television show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. As the title suggests, it was a show about animals in the wild, sponsored by an insurance company. As the show would prepare to break for commercials, Marlin would perform a transitional vignette, where he would make a connection between the action on the Serengeti and the need to purchase insurance, along the lines of “"Just as the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your children with an insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha." Now, the more cynical amongst us would like to exaggerate Marlin’s already-tortured segues, along the lines of “Just as the cobra lies in wait for the rat, so, too, do other insurance company’s lawyers wait to inject venom through their fangs into the vulnerable, innocent veins of their customers…”

Okay, you’re saying, where’s Hatfield going with this? Well, I just wrote a book, Game Theory in Management (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/default.aspx?page=641&calcTitle=1&isbn=9781409442417&lang=cy-gb), and I’m going to be somewhat blatant in references to it throughout this blog, hoping that everybody follows the link and buys (at least) one copy. Along those lines…

A lot – and I mean, a lot a lot, of project management technical approaches tend to be highly formulaic. Once an “experienced” PM gets it in her head that certain techniques and strategies are absolutely essential for project success, there’s no dissuading her that they may not be the most appropriate in the current situation. But prattling on in management science space on this point is not nearly as illustrative as comparing Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Consider that Luke and Harry:

·         Are both orphans from infancy

·         with at least one parent having an advanced power

·         and mothers renowned for their beauty.

·         They are both pursued by evil forces from birth,

·         but are saved by being brought up by an Aunt and Uncle who live in an out-of-the-way place.

·         Their foster parents know of their charge’s innate power, but don’t like it, and hope that Luke/Harry do not grow up like their fathers.

·         Both grow up not knowing about their special innate abilities,

·         nor the details of what happened to their fathers, and why they hold a special place in the overall conflict,

·         until contacted by mentors who knew their fathers, and the boys’ special place in the macro conflict, and fill in the backstory, piecemeal.

·         These mentors remove Luke/Harry from the place where they had been growing up,

·         and teach them how to use their innate powers, but are killed before Luke/Harry become masters of those powers.

·         As the backstories are filled in, it becomes apparent that if the stories’ antagonists’ succeed, it will mean the entire world/universe will be plunged into misery and darkness, and Luke/Harry are uniquely qualified to stop the antagonists from realizing their goals.

·         Each have friends, but their primary allies are one woman and one man.

·         Very early in the series, it appears that Luke/Harry will have a romantic relationship with their main female friend(s), but this possibility is eliminated fairly soon, as these female friends develop romantic relationships with the main male friend(s). Epilogues and story extensions establish that these friends’ romances result in marriage and children.

The bad guys:

·         Both Tom Riddle and Anakin Skywalker begin as prodigies with their innate powers, but don’t know what the nature of those powers are,

·         Until mentors from schools happen upon them, recognize their abilities, and recruit them.

·         Both Tom and Anakin are fatherless

·         And assume dark names upon their choosing the evil path.

·         Neither has a normal appearance, having been on the losing end of a great conflict earlier in the stories.

·         They both dress in black, head-to-foot,

·         and have the unfortunate tendency to taunt while engaged in one-on-one combat.

·         Both have killed subordinates who disappointed them, and in a most casual manner.

·         Both Voldemort and Vader engage in combat with Luke/Harry’s mentors, and lose, but manage to get away to continue the fight,

·         and kill the mentors the second time around (although Voldemort does this indirectly, via Snape [see below]).

·         Both Voldemort and Vader make the efforts to track down Harry/Luke a priority, knowing that the boys are somehow predestined to be the antagonists’ ultimate road block.

·         Luke/Harry engage in the final fight with Vader/Voldemort in a one-on-one confrontation while the balance of their allies fight a much wider conflict in the background.

·         And, if you expand the set of antagonists to include Snape and Emperor Palpatine, their ends are virtually identical: the ultimate bad guys (Voldemort and the Emperor) come to very bad ends, while their main lieutenants (Snape and Vader) are revealed to be good guys after all, who, although they die, experience some sort of last-minute revelation of their goodness stemming from an act of betraying the ultimate bad guys.

I think I’ve swerved into a consistent structure, a formulaic approach, if you will.  It’s said that there are only 28 distinct plots in all of literature, and the same may very well be true of projects. But, unless you’re willing to assert that Harry Potter and Star Wars ought to be THE model for all of film and literature, the inescapable conclusion must be:

Don’t trust experience.