I was lucky to attend the Center for the Management of Information Technology (CMIT) conference last week because I got to listen to Mark Kozak-Holland. He was speaking about his new book, which just came out, Agile Leadership and the Management of Change: Project Lessons from Winston Churchill and the Battle of Britain. As an undergrad History and Political Science major I enjoyed his presentation for both the historical perspective as well as the relationship he posited towards Agile leadership. It's important to keep this idea in perspective though. It wasn't like Churchill, Dowding and Beaverbrook were scientifically trying to do something unique or different.
I probably disagree with the speaker on the foundation of his position, but it was an interesting exercise to walk through it. In an Agile project you start with the key requirements that can be built in the iteration or sprint schedule. You implement them, deploy and consider the evolving, adjusted or new requirements for the next iteration or sprint. Sometimes this type of project might have a throw-away iteration, especially early. I doubt that anyone in England would agree that they could throw away a couple or three weeks. Additionally, I don't see historical breaks in which something was complete and they went back to re-prioritize the changes or requirements. As such, I think the argument that this is Agile leadership is thin, but as I said, it was nonetheless fun.
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