You probably know if it's going to work. Other people will, too. If you have to sell it to yourself and sell it to them, it just won't take.
What am I talking about? I think the above applies to everything from marketing to design to relationships, but I'm really talking about process. The geek community is obsessed with process, whether business or personal. We want to know how successful teams work, and we want to know the nitty-gritty of how smart individuals organize themselves. The geek obsession with process has gone from the fringes to the mainstream in several short years, tidily intersecting with the market for self-help and business books.
The thing is, formality isn't the same as a solid process. You can pick a sequence to follow in your work and life - a sequence you've seen on blogs or in books - but that doesn't mean it's the right sequence for you. What works for people is what comes naturally.
Processes like Getting Real are just codifications of common sense. If organizations weren't intent on adopting rigid, slightly batty processes like Agile and Scrum, nobody would be able to sell common sense as an alternative.
Once you're talking about process and not operating on instinct and intuition, you've already drifted away from your most effective, harmonious work.
Sep 29, 2007
Instinct and Intuition
2 comments:
I would like to agree with you, but I have certain reservations...
Since instinct and intuition seem to be largely developed by experience -- hazy memories of what's been seen and heard, upbringing, etc. -- your observations would definitely be true of someone well versed in a variety of situations pertaining to whatever it is they are navigating. But it seems to me that formality would serve well as a rough guideline for someone not as experienced and for whom instinct/intuition would be little more than superstitious sentiments.
That's just to say that I think that there's a healthy balance between formality and intuition -- maybe somewhere along the lines of intuiting how well formality works and adjusting directions accordingly. Depending on the situation, they could both serve a person well. :)
Formalization of processes is usually dictatorial in nature. It's to project one individual's common sense upon a large group.
It's kinda like word choice and semantics. Naming things is also somewhat dictatorial and invasive, since by naming things, you flavor them with all their Latinate and Anglo-Saxon roots.
It's all about shaping the insides of people's brains without us realizing it.
The best software groups I've worked with avoid pre-packaged processes, reshape ones they must deal with to their own ends, and obsessed over good and accurate names. (- usernameguy)
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