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

This phrase shows up a lot in the agile world. The correct reading of the 4 values of the Agile Manifesto is right there in what it says itself: “That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

The trouble is using the phrase as an excuse. It turns into “we don’t need processes, just let people choose,” or “people choose, so we’ll have consensus on everything,” the fallacy of the democratic organization. At bottom, it’s a way to justify not understanding the value of having processes.

Agile, derived from Lean, is entirely based on processes. And the pillar of original Lean (not the derivations like Lean Startup or Kanban) is “Kaizen”, that is, “continuous improvement”.

The idea is that today should be at least a little better than yesterday. What we do is measurable, and because of that we can say that today came out better than yesterday. The principle is simple; the execution, not so much. If you haven’t read them yet, follow the links in this paragraph to understand these concepts.

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

Since we’re all “people,” we’re sure we know how people think. And nothing could be further from the truth. We carry preconceived ideas, fallacious, superstitious, and prejudiced, many of them long outdated. From being repeated so often as clichés, we still believe them, the same way plenty of people still believe we only use 10% of our brain or that you can’t have mango with milk.

And we don’t have to guess. Just like with processes, there is a long literature on people: psychology, sociology (which evolved a great deal since the 90s thanks to the study of networks), behavioral economics, among others. It’s impossible for someone from tech to become a specialist in the Humanities, but if the responsibility is to prioritize people, on top of processes, we’d better equip ourselves well enough.

This is a Small Bite because I don’t intend, this time, to go into detail on the subject. I’d rather leave a few books I really like to give some grounding.

Within the tech field itself there are some classics worth reading:

• Peopleware by Tom DeMarco
• The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks
• The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg

From there we can move on to Behavioral Economics and Psychology:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic by Dan Ariely
• The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely
• The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
• Talent Is Overrated by Geoffrey Colvin
• Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio
• The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb

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

• Linked, the New Science of Networks by Albert-László Barabási
• Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts
• Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan Watts
• Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by Steven H. Strogatz
• Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
• Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz
• The (Mis)behavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot

Yes, a lot of these books are pretty superficial (none is technical or specialist), but the intent is just to give an introduction to the various areas. Over time, I dropped some that were too superficial, already in the entertainment and self-help category, like Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Clayton Christensen, and Clay Shirky. Even so, some of them are worth reading.

The main thing is the conclusion: contrary to what we usually think, we, people, aren’t as rational as we’d like, and our behavior is heavily influenced by external agents and by the environment.