[Small Bites/Off-Topic] "People over Processes" — what are "People"?

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November 21, 2014 · 💬 Join the Discussion

This phrase shows up a lot in the agile world. The correct interpretation of the 4 principles of the Agile Manifesto is what it itself says: “Although we know there is value in the item on the right, we value the one on the left more.”

But this phrase is used to justify “we don’t need to have processes, just let people choose,” or “people choose, so we’ll have consensus on everything” — the fallacy of the democratic organization — anyway, excuses to justify not understanding the value of having processes.

Agile, derived from Lean, is entirely based on processes. And the main one of the processes is what original Lean (not the derivations like Lean Startup or Kanban) has as a pillar: “Kaizen”, that is, “continuous improvement”, where today is at least a little better than yesterday, where what we do is measurable and because of that it’s possible to say that today we did better than yesterday. The principle is simple, the execution not so much. If you haven’t read it yet, see the links in this paragraph to understand these principles.

Now comes the bad part: how to talk about people? Or more specifically, about people’s behavior?

Since we are all “people,” we’re sure we know how people think. And nothing could be further from the truth. We have fallacious, superstitious, prejudiced preconceived ideas, long outdated, but from being repeated so much as clichés we still believe it’s true, the same way many still believe we only use 10% of our brain or even that we can’t have mango with milk.

And we don’t need to guess — just like in the case of processes, there is a long literature on people. You’ll find psychology, sociology (which evolved a lot since the 90s thanks to the understanding of network science), behavioral economics, among others. Of course, it’s impossible for us, in tech, to become specialists in the Humanities area, but if we have the responsibility to prioritize people instead of just processes, we’d better equip ourselves enough.

This is a Small Bite because I don’t intend, this time, to discuss the subject in detail, but rather leave books I really like to give a bit of a foundation.

Within the tech area itself there are some classic books that should be read:

Then we can move to Behavioral Economics, Psychology:

And more specifically about the behavior of various agents in groups (network theory):

Yes, many of these books are fairly superficial (none is technical/specialist) but the goal is just to give an introduction to the various areas. And over time I eliminated some that are too superficial (already more in the entertainment/self-help category) like Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Clayton Christensen, Clay Shirky. It’s worth reading some of these.

The main point is the conclusion that, contrary to what we commonly think, we, people, aren’t as rational as we’d like, and our behavior is extremely influenced by external agents and the environment.