Agile and Objectivism

There used to be a time when I was an Objectivism geek. I believed that ideals are, well, IDEALS. You know? They are set in stone. You stick by your ideals not matter what etc. Then I joined ThoughtWorks. Here we follow Agile and Lean for a living. I am not sure if you are familiar with either of them. A very important concept which forms the foundation for your thought process here, at least for the people I know, is "There is no silver bullet". I knew about this from Mythical Man Month when I was in college. But then, I failed to think from this perspective at all, I guess. The more I think about this today, the more I am convinced that Objectivism is waterfall.

I am not going into the details of either because both of them are so huge a topic by themselves that there are more than one 1000 page books on either of them. So, assuming you are interested to know what I have to say (not a safe assumption) and would know the essential of both, I am starting off.

Meeting sensible people is very important in life. Not everyone is as lucky as folks in Shaolin to have true masters around. Rather, I am talking about those people who have been there and done that or know someone who has and tell you their experiences in a productive way. I am talking about those people who make you think through their thoughts. I have met, lucky me, quiet a few exceptional people at ThoughtWorks who do that. One person in particular, thought me the most obvious, yet the most difficult things to follow in life. I say life because even though it was a thought experiment during a pairing session, it could be easily extrapolated to apply to any aspect of life. The lesson being, "Question everything." Now, I think this is like a corollary of there is no silver bullet. Only when you assume that there is no silver bullet, can you start believing in the fact that you have to question everything, well because, there _is_ no silver bullet!

Now, coming to Objectivism, you are objective about everything in life. You know what is right and what is wrong and stick by them, either of them. You just know what is right. You are always sure of it. But sadly, for mere mortals, life is gray. It just is. So, here we are, trying to do this whole lot of upfront deciding about what is right and what is not. We are creating all these rules and boundaries because we are just sure about it. We choose one thing and dedicate our life to it. Now, my million dollar question - what if you are not sure? I haven't found a convincing answer for this yet. Am not saying there isn't one, but I am not clear with what it is. See? I am unsure about Objectivism itself! Compare this with continuous improvement and constant feedback ideals in Agile. I think it makes perfect sense. Things are in a constant flux in nature. A person you know today is not the same if you meet after 3 months. The way you had felt about someone wouldn't necessarily be the same, say, after an year. The food you savor, the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, they are all so very varying. How can you make up your mind as to, say, I will only listen to Led Zeppelin (I would) and nothing else? Or everything that is similar to it?

You evolve over time. You like somethings and don't like some other things. Some stuff, you don't have an opinion on. Its not not-caring, its just lack of knowledge about those things. You don't need to know what is right or wrong. You can afford to do small changes and get to know if its right or wrong.

I guess I completely missed the point there is in Objectivism. I am not saying there isn't one. I think I failed to see a practicality in it. Then I came across this diametrically opposite way of leading life. It just makes so much sense.

I can imagine it without any difficulty, sitting with you and you (though I don't think it may ever happen, you two talking out the way you used to) in Koshyee's drinking Iced tea, Coffee, beer or Vodka, (not) eating whatever dead animals it is that you guys used to eat and talking about this for hours and not coming to a consensus. May be, we never wanted to come to one I guess.

(This is as concise as I can write about this. Though there are so many things I want to talk about, I think I wanted to compare them on the face value.)