Romans, Greeks and Barbarians
I referred some time ago to an article by Robert L Glass published in IEEE’s Software magazine entitled "Greece vs. Rome Two Very Different Software Cultures". You can purchase this article but I find it a bit expensive for a two pages column. It is based on The Olduvai Imperative by Peter DeGrace and Leslie Hulet Stahl. Unfortunately this book seems out of print (although it can be found from specialty book shops online).
The author of the article describes three work cultures. The greek one where workers are "(…) individuals or self motivated members of teams" that were behaving like contractors and the roman one where the worker is "(…) sacrificing himself for the good of the organization, giving up his individuality, and closely identifying with his group." are taken from the book. He adds a third one, the barbarian.
He goes on to describe the compared values of each culture (I would have to reprint the whole article to give them here and I don’t want to infringe on the IEEE and Robert L Glass copyrights). Let me go straight to the conclusion as it applies to Agility: "Greeks would fit pretty well in the Agile Camp, Romans would be working mightily to improve their CMM level, and barbarians would say "huh?" if you mentioned either one.".
The article finishes with an excellent tale (taken from the book) telling what many of us have witnessed for a long time. The roman produces a great deal of external activity and produces a lot of artifacts showing more productivity. He beats the greek who took time to think of a simple solution that did not display enough effort. But Robert L Glass adds that in reality the barbarian wins by coding like crazy, introducing tons of bugs and then saving the day by fixing them. The barbarian, in our current software culture will be celebrated as a hero.
I know it is a very sad story. I blame Microsoft Windows a lot for that, having ingrained in the popular culture that bugs and crashes happen and are a normal part of software. But that is only my personal nag.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I have yet to be exposed to a company which doesn’t value collaboration either of the Greek or Roman variety. I also observe a consistent pattern where the behavior of employees at all levels does not match that aspiration very well, and Barbarians thrive.
An article from Cutter.com published today speaks of the association of the word “team” with athletics and competition, such that the psychological preference implied is to win at all costs. It suggests using the term “Ensemble” (as in the theatrical sense) rather than “team”, because it conveys a sense of a group for whom the whole takes priority over any single part. The basis is that it is impossible for actors _not_ to collaborate.
Collaboration should be natural and we do need to explore the causes that prevent it from happening. The theme has bothered me for a while but I think the terminology is not the primary culprit. I can offer some candidates I’ve been watching over the years:
1. Lack of common purpose
2. Setting individual targets (aka local optimization)
3. Focus on accountability rather than results
The most severe case of these I’ve observed was a team where each individual developer had a project to own, manage and deliver. This was aggravated by a bunch of Romans working to get CMMI Level 2 certification for the team (which they did). While observing this situation, a token release was done because nothing had been produced in nine months and there was a need “to be seen to be making progress”. The individual accountability, pressure and stress levels were so high that developers would not even talk to those sitting next to them for fear of being dragged into someone else’s problems. Everyone looked at the guy who had been wrestling with the hardest project for the last 6+ months, and all were glad they were not him. There was no pairing, since any time spent helping others would be at the expense of your own project and management would perceive the offending pair to be chit-chatting.
There was an “uprising”. It had been brewing for a few weeks and took place on the day that the CMMI certificate was put up on the wall.
The developers pooled all their work together and discussed which were the most important projects. Sure enough, the hardest project was also unanimously perceived to be the most important. Everyone started to work on that.
This required a strong commitment from every developer to hold ranks when presenting this new behavior to managers and clients. Sure enough, managers tried to pick developers our one by one and asked about progress on each individual project. Clients didn’t care. Being traders, they welcomed the volatility because it only increased the likelihood of something being delivered!
Suddenly there was common purpose, team targets (and volunteering – no task assignment was tolerated), and focus on prioritized results. The team delivered the most important project five weeks later, simultaneously progressing on the next two most important ones and all the while pairing with increasing promiscuity. After a few months and a few projects under their belts, the team never again generated a line of code that wasn’t test-driven and paired (or in threes!)
Was this a transformation from Roman to Greek methods, fending off Barbarians in the process? Probably not 100% but your post made me remember all this so in my mind, it was. I hope this makes you less sad about the choices that exist.
December 1st, 2007 at 4:31 am
Let me complete the analogy: before they were greeks, the greeks were barbarians. Then came the romans and they took the greek culture, art and teachers as a republic to become an empire. The roman empire survived a while by heavily using barbarian mercenaries. Eventually the barbarians sacked Rome.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:03 am
[...] Agile « Romans, Greeks and Barbarians [...]
December 9th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I couldn’t help laughing when I got to the last two sentences in the second-to-last paragraph because my immediate reaction was “Microsoft.” Then lo and behold, you said the same thing in the next paragraph. But I think it’s pure ego to claim as a “personal nag” an attitude that permeates not just techdom, but also much of the consumer world:)
March 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
[...] still prefer the Greek/Roman/Barbarian analogy. Still the Bonobos/Chimpanzees one is now a full part of my mental toolbox although I find [...]