This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: How many of us live this every day?
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
"The Knowing-Doing Gap" is a very insightful book that I encourage everyone to read. There's one particular chapter, entitled "When Talk Substitutes for Action" that is particular relevant.
The chapter talks about the tendency to treat "talking" about something as equivalent to actually "doing" something about it. The author writes about different variations on the theme:
Making Decisions as a Substitute for Action
Making Presentations as a Substitute for Action
Preparing Documents as a Substitute for Action
Using Mission Statements as a Substitute for Action
Planning as a Substitute for Action
Manageability discusses this in regard to development, but it's a more widespread problem. Change licensing policy? See the above. Change prices? See the above. Change just about any long term policy? See the above. Inertia is a powerful force in business - especially in larger companies. Getting past the stalling actions (which are, consciously or otherwise, a call to keep the status quo) is hard. This is why once of the marketing guys I work with, after reading Kent Beck's XP book stated that it wasn't a development process so much as it was a general business process. I think he was onto something there.
Previous Topic
