Thanks Chris for the wonderful welcome.

I’ve been following the discussions here on jazz and improvisation in project management and it reminds me of one of my favourite tools these days: eXtreme Programming.

The thing that really makes XP interesting is, that it’s been designed for a changing world. Remember tat big project you’d been working on for months, really giving it your best with your team mates, when suddenly the requirements changed, or the customer changed his mind or your boss got a new idea or… In many projects this would mean that a lot of work will be lost, but the XP methodology was designed not to function in spite of this – XP was designed for a world where this kind of thing is inevitable and will happen all the time. XP projects eat unscheduled changes for breakfast.

Extreme Programming was defined about six years ago by Kent Beck, and though it is nominally a method for structuring softare development projects, it has applications way beyond that. I used to be a software developer, and have tried the method in it’s intended field where it is a true revolution compared to the way we used to do things. These days my interests are in making people happy at work, and in crafting an organization of people who work for this purpose, and I find again and again that the lessons I learned from eXtreme Programming (or simply XP) can be used here also.

This is possible because XP is based on a number of rules, and here are a few of my favourites:
User stories. This means, that instead of writing long pages of specifications about your system, you write stories about the users, and how they use the systems. This is essentially a narrative approach, one which is much more in tune with how our minds work. Stories can give you a less precise but much more robust understanding of the goal you’re trying to achieve.

Small releases. Rather than aiming for one big release of your system in six months, you aim to deliver something every 1-3 weeks. This keeps you focused on the specific job ahead of you, rather than on some problem that may or may not arise in a few months.

Move people around/pair programming/collective ownership. Nobody does just one thing, and nobody works alone. In XP projects you see two programmers at every computer, because every task is tackled by two people working together. This means that no area of the system is known or “owned” by only one person, making your project much less vulnerable.

Simplicity. My favourite. XP states that you should always do the simplest thing that could possibly work. This is practically my mantra these days and it’s immensely liberating. Don’t think ahead six months. Achieve your current goals, then move on to something else.

These are just my favourites, there are many more rules in XP that you can explore yourself, and almost all of them can be translated from the world of programming into almost any kind of project.

Also there are obvious parallels between XP and Open Space Technology like Common ownership, Simplicity and meetings where project participants stand in a circle. Also XP is essentially open source, meaning anyone can buy the book and run their own XP projects.

My friend Alex Kjerulf is a wonderful guy.

I say my friend, like I know him really well, but the truth is that I met him online in the summer, linked to his blog, Positive Sharing and then carried on a bit of an exchange with him. Turns out that he and I have a lot of similar interests, including Open Space Technology, a simultaneous reading of Crptonomicon and a love of fun. In fact, he does a lot of work with laughter and is currently writing a book about happiness at work. It’s in Danish, so I have no idea how good it is. But I consider him a friend, and I enjoy my communication nwith him, whether passively reading his blog, over email, or face to face. He has a sneaky sense of humour.

Last year, at the Practice of Peace conference, I met Alex face-to-face. He helped me to hang some prayer flags at the Whidbey Institute that were sent by Michael Herman when he was in Nepal. I liked Alex immediately, and although I didn’t get much time with him, I watched him at work admiringly as he led a group of about 30 people in a whole series of amazing laughter exercises. He documented them too.

Last month, Alex proposed something really interesting. He suggested that we switch blogs for a week. I agreed although I have no idea why. I don’t know what I’m about to learn by doing this (he wondered if it would be like sleeping with each other’s partners…metaphorically of course!) but I wonder if it has to do with online identity.

I’ve been online since 1992, starting with BBSs and freenets and the graduating to the web in 1996. I’ve participated in a number of online forums, including chat rooms, email lists and group blogs. I leave comments at other people’s websites and weblogs, and so I’m used to seeing my words published under a different template. In fact, recently I have been thinking that I should consolidate this thinking a little more, and as I publish some comments in people’s weblogs that represent a leap in original thinking for me, I have been re-posting them here. The recent thread on improvisation is an example. Nineteen comments as of today, while the topic has dropped out of site at gassho where it was originally posted. I don’t think I’m really tied to my online identity, but this experiment may prove otherwise. At any rate, I have a nagging feeling about having my stuff appear at Alex’s place, like somehow cyberspace is full of discrete territories rather than connections and ends. This is already challenging my emotional connection to webspace.

I wonder too if it will seem like our blogs are opening up a bit more by having another brain adding to them. In this respect I’m excited because I like Alex’s work and having some of it published here will be cool. In the meantime, I’ll take some of my stuff over to Positive Sharing and see what effect it has there.

Rather than sleeping with each other’s partners it actually feel more like we’re working on each other’s cars, with our own tools, diagnostics systems and ways of doing things. Hopefully I don’t completely dismantle his engine. I fully expect him to put a little of his high octane gas in mine.

Anyway, join me this week at Positive Sharing and keep your eyes on this spot for Alex’s contributions. At the end of the week we’ll talk about what we learned.

From the comments on improvisation, Andy has added a provocative thought:

Now I am going to propose something. I believe that an organization’s vision is as messy and apparently incoherent as the organization itself. Ask around in organizations with which you work and see if anyone actually has the vision statement committed to memory. They generally don’t. Which isn’t to say that individuals don’t have a vision. But ask them what their vision for the organization is and maybe what they think the organization’s vision is, and start a conversation about the difference between the two.

When I run Open Space meetings, and we are doing visioning, and the agenda gets set, I point the sponsors to the wall and invite them to look at the two dozen or 40 or 50 topics there and say “There is your vision.” The sum total of where everyone in the organization wants to go IS the vision for the organization. Diluting these nuggets of intrinsic motivation down to one fairly empty statement in an effort to extrinsically motivate people does nothing to work with the actual vision that is there.

Vision is a personal thing. In Ojibway culture, one needs to spend a lot of time cultivating a vision. In Ojibway cosmology, humans were given the unique gift to dream and have visions. In fact, human self-fulfillment comes through visioning. It is something which lives deep in the person. When groups of people come together, the vision that motivates them is their own. If that vision connects with others, then you have an organization. If not, then people don’t come together to work.

You can point to commonalities in the visions of people within an organization. For instance, a development NGO might have a motherhood vision statement that says “we’re here to help” because that is a component of nearly everyone’s personal vision. But to say that “this is our vision, and everything we do is motivated by that” isn’t really true. Actions are undertaken by individuals for a greater purpose that simply the “organizational vision.”

So I guess I’m saying that organizations aren’t in fact singular, coherent wholes. They are networks of individuals that come together and come apart all within the frame of a larger mission such as “making cars” or “providing medical care” or “loaning money.” These little networks appear and disappear as they are needed, not because of a vision created to extrinsically motivate behaviours.

What do you think?

I’m not sure, but Matthew Baldwin’s experience of a rare medical condition might just be the funniest thing I have read for a while.

And then I read the comments:

What a Christmas he had. Here’s hoping 2004 is considerably meeker.

mysterium points me to an e.e. cummings poem, which makes a compelling way to start a new year: