Poetic simplicity

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ”

                                                   - Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Since I first saw this qoute a few years ago I have had a piece of paper with it in large letters hanging by my desk. I find that it captures the the way that I the best way to develop somehting and that it also catches the essence of agile. Essentially I read it as saying, that if you can create a shared vision in your team and get everybody passionate about reaching the goal, then the team will self-organize and use all their enegy to reach that goal.

I have long wanted to write about this quote but each time found that I extracted more and more meaning and the post got longer and longer and still did not really catch the spirit of the qoute. So today I realised that perhaps I should do it the other way around. Because the qoute is short and simple and yet expresses so much, lets just keep it simple and remember that agile is about simplicity and that sometimes less is more.

This qoute has helped me a lot when both planning and executing a project – I hope it will help you to.