I do a lot of reading – books, blogs, articles and more. Over the years I’ve come across a number of quotes that I rely on time and again for emphasizing or illustrating a point or a particular perspective.
I thought it would be fun to list some of them here and then to ask the readers to supply their own favorite “go to” quotes in the comments below.
I hope you find some of these useful!
On Measuring Things
“Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way…do not complain about illogical behavior.”
Eliyahu Goldratt
I love this quote, which is why I list it first. I doubt I need to explain why.
“What gets measured gets managed – even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”
Peter Drucker
One of the reasons I dislike Story Points and the associated “velocity” measure is that it’s so often abused. When velocity becomes a target teams will give you speed. But at what cost? Speed increases should be a side effect of intentional improvement efforts, not the primary goal.
Read more of my thoughts here: Are You Weaponizing Story Points?
“It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.”
W. Edwards Deming
I see this one continually misquoted by people justifying vanity metrics. The misquote: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.
Deming literally said the exact opposite.
On Metrics
“Don’t look with your eyes, look with your feet… people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.”
Taiichi Ohno
Taiichi Ohno was a leading voice in the creation of TPS (Toyota Production System, aka Lean in Western culture). His views on management’s reliance on things like reporting metrics and dashboards still rings true – the numbers alone will never tell the actual story.
Instead, management should “Go See” (aka Gemba Walks) what is really happening. Use your feet to walk to the place of work and observe, ask questions and offer expert advice (without commanding). Rely on first hand observation rather than 2nd or 3rd hand reports and meetings where the truth is often a bit skewed towards success even when reality is different. We’re all familiar with watermelon status reports, right?
On Efficiency
“Watch the baton, not the runners.”
Don Reinertsen
It’s extremely common for managers and project management people to believe that people should be busy 100% of the time. There are many tactics used to manage and measure to full utilization, often in the form of “productivity” metrics. Knowing that being busy is highly valued, people will fill up their time with no and low value work rather than appearing to have a less than full calendar.
Instead, like the baton in a relay race, the focus should be on the work itself. What is causing the “work” to not be flowing? Where are the constraints? Why are people becoming blocked? This is very closely related to the next quote – the utilization trap.
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker
I usually pull this one out when teams/management are lazer focused on speed of delivery rather than evaluating the value of what they are actually creating.
Very often this is tied to a management push for 100% utilization of people.
Who cares if you are the world’s fastest team at creating a particular widget if no one wants it? Focus on value/outcomes rather than amount of output.
On Change Resistance
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
As Agilists, we are often attempting to bring change beyond teams to the entire organization. Often the biggest “wins” are beyond the scope of the team, they are changes to the systems themselves.
“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
Charlie Munger
For people who have learned to exploit the current system to their advantage, expect them to resist changing the system. They have gotten where they are within that system. They will need a huge WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to not block or undermine enterprise level change efforts.
On Learning (as an organizational culture)
“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”
W. Edwards Deming
An enormous part of becoming a more Agile Organization is embracing continuous learning as part of the corporate culture. If people and teams are not encouraged to learn, you will quickly fall behind your competition.
Learning is also done in other ways that wouldn’t likely be thought of as traditional. Here’s where a lot of the mind shift comes into play.
Each user story, feature or epic is an opportunity to learn. Approach these artifacts from that perspective – by doing this story what do we hope to learn or validate? Is this valuable to the customer?
On the Importance of Change (Enterprise Level Agility)
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
W. Edwards Deming
Underneath it all “Agile” can be defined as the ability to respond to change quickly with little to no additional cost. Deming said it better of course.
Your organization is not required to change. It’s also not guaranteed to survive. Though Darwin never actually said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” it rings quite true. (it is a paraphrase of his writing, not a direct quote)
On Quality
“Inspection to improve quality is too late, ineffective, costly.
W. Edwards Deming
Quality comes not from inspection, but from the improvement of the production process..”
For years I’ve believed that “you cannot test in quality” for software products. You need to move “testing” left in your process flow. Review your development practices that are allowing defects to be introduced to the code.
There are a variety of techniques to use here such as the many flavors of test-driven development. True, those methods are more about software design than testing but that’s the point. Design your software so that it is testable by writing those tests before writing the code!
Wrapping Up
I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple quotes and will continue to add to this list over time. There is wisdom in listening to and learning from others. Stand on their shoulders and make your way.
Please add your favorite quotes in the comments below!
If you liked this post and want to learn more about Agile, Lean or Leadership, please consider purchasing a book from my Recommended Reading page.
Until next time!
