Scrum Gathering - My Talk About Corruption

Written by Jamie Tuesday, 11 October 2011 00:00

Today – maybe as you read this – I am hosting a session at the Scrum Gathering in London.  The session is meant to be a dialogue between everyone in the room.  So, there is no speaker, as such, just a load of delegates chatting.  Depending on my final plans, we will have a loose discussion or a structured one.  I am leaning to the loose.  My aim is to teach as much as I learn, so I hope I can teach something.  Here is the general gist.  Below that I have included some reading materials and links.

The Gist
The problem with knowledge work is that it is open to corruption.  Handy said that because:

[expertise] is the most socially acceptable [form of power,] it is also the most sought after and will bring out many spurious claimants.  Their bluff, if bluff it is, may well work, but if discovered the dethroned expert will find that she has created a credibility gap that may well contaminate future attempts to claim expertise for herself.  (Handy, p. 131)

This is the problem all knowledge workers face.  However, when the barrier to entry is low, and when knowledge is codified into simple rules and procedures, we make it easy for conmen to arise.  This session is about how rules and procedures enable the conman.  The session, then, is made up of three parts: the history of power and how it can be exploited; some conclusions that link this analysis to the problems the Scrum community faces with the parasites that feed on it; a discussion regarding all of the above.  It will be, I am very sure, a lot of fun.

Further Reading On This Site
I have made a number of notes on this site about power, its uses and abuses and the relationship to software development and/or project management.  The most important are:

‘Such and Such Were the Joys’.  Here I explain how corruption rises hand-in-hand with expertise.  I link that to Ricardo’s magic trick.

‘Agile Rules and Procedures: Just Do It’.  This is the follow on to ‘Such and Such’ and explores the nature of rules and procedures – themselves a form of power, like expertise – and how they can be used and abused.

‘Followers’.  This is the final piece of the summer trilogy.  Here I finally say that all corruption is based on willing submission to a greater power or higher authority.  I (re)-presented a matrix that puts scepticism against faith and shows why the former may be more useful than the latter.

Other notes include:

‘More Rules and Procedures’.  The link between good habits, dogma and operational resilience.

‘In Response to SCORE’.  The link between childhood hurt and fetishes.  This goes some way to explaining why we (wrongly) attach our success to things like teddy bears or software methods.

‘Practical Scrum’.  This is a, rather embarrassing, video cast that I recorded and did not expect anyone to watch.  It links codified knowledge to fetishes and states, quite boldly, that you will only succeed with Scrum if you give it little or no power at all.

‘If You Could Visualise Incompetence’.  This is a photo blog of how rules and procedures can get perverted.

‘Where Did Our Thinkers Go?’  This is a critical evaluation of Steve Denning’s book, The Leaders Guide to Radical Management. I think he is got his presentation very wrong and that radical management’s opposition to Taylorism is disingenuous.

‘A Riddle: Why Are Your Products and Leaders Crap?’ This note looks at the link between power, leadership and artefacts produced.  It explains the charmers and the conmen of our communities.

Books
This talk was prepared from a combination of my experiences and a number of books and/or papers/blogs.  The following list is a summary of the most important.  The analytical reading of these books would teach the reader more about engineering and/or project management than any single book on either could.  Getting through this list would be a worthwhile project all on its own.

Managers and Magic, Clevery.  A nice little book about how managers and consultants not only collude but that corruption is woven into the fabric of their relationship.  This book also pits scepticism against faith.

Understanding Organisations, Handy.  This book covers, in chapter 5, power and influence.

The Rational Optimist, Ridley.  The nature of corruption and the division of labour comes up a number of times here.

Nature via Nurture, Ridley.  A meditation on the nature of cause and effect.

Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City, Mak.  An interesting romp which covers power, stupidity, rules and procedures, and the evolution of my city.

Crete, Beevor.  An OK look at the battle of Crete with one or two observations to do with strategy, intent and cross-functional teams.

The Discovery of Heaven, Mulisch.  This book, a work of fiction, explores power, scripture, the relationship of power to the word – in the beginning there was the word, and the word was God – etc.  Helga’s murder teaches us everything we need to know about the lunacy of methodologies that ask us to be courageous or open.

Adapt, Harford.  Not a bad book about failure, rules and procedures and tight-coupling.  It is, however, very rudimentary.

Ideology in the Age of Extremes, Eagleton.  The history of ideologies of the last century.  Teaches us about the danger of defending an idea or giving an idea – such as communism or Deming’s wheel – too much power.

These two blogs by Mayer and Cockburn.

A Brief History of Economics, Canterbury.  Funny and informative.

Golding’s Freefall. Golding’s poor Samuel Mountjoy learns everything he can but cannot escape himself.  A tragic look at cause and effect as well as the danger of dogma.

Onfray, The Atheist Manifesto. Through Paul of Tarsus, Onfray teaches us all about the cult of personality and the need to think for oneself.  You will never look at your leaders in quite the same light again.

Chatwin’s ‘The Morality of Things’.  How fetishes work.

DeSavlo, Virginia Woolf: The Impacy of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work.  How power structures work, how they can be abused, and how they are fractal.  This book is the missing link between Satir and software – relevant and powerful.  And, via the analysis of Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s room, we can re-learn what we think we already know: plan to throw one away, you will anyway.

I hope the talk goes well and that people get something from it and the reading lists.

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Jamie, London, October, 2011.