Quotes
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
Ben Horowitz
I don’t believe that there’s a silver bullet, that if you do this one thing, you solve the problems of the world.
Darnell M. Hunt
The truth is that there is no shortcut, no silver bullet, and no special sauce to build a winning campaign in the 21st century.
Elizabeth McKenna
What is it about technology that inspires so much silver bullet syndrome? Or people jumping on bandwagons, hoping to get an easy fix or solution?
In 2014, I wrote a blog post about Bandwagon’s. At the time, I was venting a bit about how folks were modeling themselves after companies in the agile space. And that continues to this day. But another long-term trend is jumping on bandwagon’s related to frameworks.
Scaling frameworks seem to be one of the largest culprits in our space, but there are many others. Let’s explore some of the biggest silver bullets—
Scaling frameworks
SAFe is the largest example here of silver bullet thinking. The goal seems to be less focused on agile principles, mindset, and establishing your own journey. Instead, the focus appears to be on packaging a 1-size, fits all prescriptive solution, training & certification, oh and generating as much revenue as possible.
But the other scaling frameworks (Disciplined Agile, LeSS, Nexus, Scrum@Scale, and any others) are just as bad in their own way. All can be viewed through the lens of a silver bullet.
Scrum and Kanban, by the “Book”
Another trend that disturbs me is the trend towards having to do Scrum or other methods by the book (the Scrum Guide). And if you don’t, you can be accused of—not Scrum, not part of Scrum, Scrum-but, Zombie Scrum, etc.
I’ve always wondered why it’s such a big deal to be fully following the rules, whatever that means, for any method. I mean, in the end, who cares. I mean “doing Scrum” means so little when compared to “being Agile”. At least to me.
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/sorry-scrum-the-game-might-be-over-for-you-915227f3a0d
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2019/4/5/back-to-basicspart-deux
Spotify
Poor, poor Spotify. I feel like no other framework or idea in the agile community has been so misused, misrepresented, and misunderstood than Spotify. I’ve often heard it used as in—we’re using Spotify to scale or we’re adopting Spotify.
I wonder how many folks, who have wonderful agile learnings to share, haven’t don’t so because of the fallout associated with Spotify have the courage to share and then have their ideas corrupted so thoroughly?
https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/failed-squad-goals/
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/11/23/spotify-very-interesting
Tools
Tools are another place where we looking for the ubiquitous tool to leverage so that we do less thinking, as the tool does it for us. Jira seems to have become that tool and I often hear folks talking about it as if it is the only tool in the space.
I’ve looked at usage surveys and Jira has ~60-70% of the tooling market. And the problem with all of the tools is that we view them as silver bullets. Doing what the tools say instead of leveraging our own experience, experimentation, learning, and growing.
Buzzwords
For example Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, Business Agility, DevOps are a sampling of the organizational-wide change that agile can inspire in organizations.
In this case, the silver bullet is using these terms as if they have deeper meaning or guidance to offer. When, in fact, they are simply terminology that does more harm than good by confusing everyone as to what they mean or imply.
They also allow us to avoid our own hard work associated with agile ways of working, continuous learning, and the agile mindset.
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2017/8/12/devops-explainedsimply
Wrapping Up
Our (the community in general, organizations, human natures) need to find Silver Bullets that are easy, canned and packaged for success.
Some of you might recall a software development process entitled the Rational Unified Process or RUP. Dean Leffingwell, the creator of SAFe, also was a key architect/contributor to RUP. If you’ve used both, as I have, you’ll see similarities in their scope, approach/strategy, packaging, and intent. Too many similarities for it to be a coincidence.
I bring up RUP because it gives us another earlier example where we were looking for a silver bullet solution to tell us how to build software.
And, going back to the quotes, Silver Bullets simply don’t work. Instead, a more sustainable and appropriate approach has to be earned by experimentation, thoughtful analysis and customization, experienced advice, and iterative learning. In other words, by doing the hard work, as there is no easy replacement for it.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.