Agile Styles
A very stimulating talk again yesterday at the BayAPLN meeting by Joshua Kerievsky. The talk was about “The Art of Choosing an Agile Transition Style” and was based on an analogy between painting and Agile Transitions.
I am not sure I fully buy into the analogy of painting style to agile transition style. I actually feel the painting style is more useful as an analogy for the practice style (rather than transition only). And that is what was actually talked about most of the time.
A specific point sticked out during the talk and in the questions for which no good answer was articulated. It stemmed from the remark that the creators and masters of new styles (impressionism, cubism, expressionism) had a classic (baroque) training and were perfectly able to paint in that style. And so the question came of how much knowledge do people need to know about the pre-existing styles before being able to apply more modern style.
I think the question is best answered by making a distinction between technique and style. The impressionists were all trained in the techniques that supported the baroque style. And this knowledge enabled them to create new techniques, experiment with them and then give rise to new styles. In this case the style emerges from the techniques that are applied to the art. Obviously, once the technique is created it can be taught and the student of that technique can then paint in the new styles. The deeper their technical knowledge the more styles they have available to express their art or satisfy their patrons.
And the lesson I take out of this is that to apply agile in various environments one has to be well versed in all the techniques that exist to successfully select the ones that will support the desired style. It seems to indicate also that to successfully transition from one style to another one needs a good understanding of the techniques and aspirations that created the old style in addition to knowing the techniques that will support the new style.
Stimulating is it not ?
