Last week, I had an opportunity to attend a short talk by Jeff McKenna. Jeff was involved in the first Scrum project (you know, Easel Corporation, Smalltalk…). It was very interesting hearing his perspective on Scrum's early days. One thing in particular that I found intriguing was that he said all they were trying to do on that first project was to figure out something that would work. That confirmed a hunch of mine that Scrum's practicalities were realized before people started thinking about how Scrum relates to complexity theory, etc. That isn't the story you might infer from reading the literature.
I was also impressed with the respect he mentioned for Don Reitersten's work, and his recognition of the growing awareness of Lean throughout the Agile community. He made it a point of emphasis that Lean preceded Scrum by decades. I think I chuckled out loud when he said that, because that's a thought that has always crossed my mind whenever I've heard someone touting Lean as something newer and better than Agile.
Of course, Jeff said a lot of other things that resonated with me. But more so than any one thing that he said, it occurred to me that with so many people in the Agile and Lean communities competing to be the next generation of "thought leaders", we have a wealth of knowledge and experience in Jeff and his cohorts that we'd be ill advised to ignore. To hear some tell it, that group is just a bunch of curmudgeons who are no longer in touch. Having had the pleasure of spending a few minutes with Jeff, I have to say that I strongly disagree.
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