The Agile Rabbi

 “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose /  By Any Other Name would smell as sweet.” This line from Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet implies it doesn't matter what we call something. That its value and meaning are intrinsic in the thing itself.  Words have power, they shape our perceptions.  The pen is mightier than the sword . That phrase was penned in 1893 and is still very true today. How many times have you, or someone you know been taken in by an article on the internet just to find out later it was false? There was a recent survey to discover how many people fact check what they read on the internet . The result is that most of us don't fact check most of what we read and just assume it is true.  So, how does all this relate to DevOps? It matters what we call a collection of teams within an organization. What we call a collection of teams  is important. Are they Scrum Teams? Dev Teams? something else? The way that an organization refers to its teams affects ho

"It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission"  "It’s easier to apologize than to get permission"  We have all heard these phrases or something similar. I believe that there is a much better approach than asking for forgiveness after the fact, which is to Broadcast Intent beforehand. Be transparent with your intentions, tell people what you are planning to do. It is not asking for permission; however, it does leave an opening for conversation if others have questions or concerns. The phrases about forgiveness and permission are often attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper . She did help make their use more widespread, however the phrases didn't originate with her. Grace Hopper is one of the early pioneers in computer science. She coined the term debugging , although in her case it was the removal of an actual insect . Broadcasting our intent is something many of us do in our daily lives. Using turn signals when driving is a form of broadcastin