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Agile Terminology for Normal People
Agile practitioners often fail to realize that 99.9% of society has never heard Agile terminology. As I recently hosted Agile Baltimore Lean Coffee, I heard very smart people use terms like sprints, Scrum, Kanban, Agile, and stories. They described waste as muri, muda, and mura. To top it off, they described learning as shu, ha, and ri. This was all just casual conversation. One fellow at the table was new to the group and asked, what specifically do all of those things mean? Though everyone was eager to clarify, I think there may have been a little embarrassment as well. Before you go super vertical with a conversation, know who your audience is. You shouldn’t need to educate them, just to have a conversation. Speak in layman terms.
Overt Overuse of Domain Specific Terms
I’ve been in the Agile space about a decade now. I notice an overt overuse of Japanese and other terms to describe just about anything. I know some came from Toyota Production Systems. But there comes a time when I think we try too hard. I guess if you want to sound smart, take something that already exists. Find a foreign language translation and then start presenting it at conferences. Nothing gets people writing notes faster than a word they don’t understand or have to spell phonetically.
Comments (4)
Mark Levison
Derek – I had this challenge only way more fun, just last week. I bumped into a former Canadian Prime Minister. She asked me to explain what I do. My quick response was a bit lame. My wife’s response: http://dorisbelland.com/2016/09/dear-former-prime-minister-heres-what-i-do-for-women-and-why-i-do-it/ was better. My wife has inspired me to do better myself. I should have a blog entry as to what and why in the next week or two.
Cheers
Mark
So, for your wife, I took away “In a nutshell, I intend to help change the financial game for women.”
She’s got me hooked!
I’m interested to see what you come up with. Ping me when it’s posted.
When asked what I do, my wife replies “he’s a consultant“. Seems to satisfy the casual conversationalist.
My response is usually, “I fix big companies“. It either results in an “oh” and we move on or it kicks off a deeper more interesting conversation.
I rarely say Agile, Scrum, or anything remotely close. All of the muggles out there really don’t need to hear it.
Paul Ionica
Hi Derek,
Thanks for taking the time to remind folks from within the Agile world that the rest of us still use layman terms and lack understanding of their terminology ,let alone the concepts behind them.
Your admission that “there comes a time when I think we try too hard” could be true in light of the ongoing effort of some “Agilers” to come up with replacement words for existing ones. It can lead to a sense of elitism within those groups., and I don’t think it is beneficial in the long run for the Agile cause
. If you try to get a point across, clarity will get one further than lofty words.
Best,
Paul
Dave Nicolette
Nice one, Derek! You might enjoy this, too: https://slides.com/davenicolette/you-keep-using-that-word#/