A Story about Ostrich Abuse

[Daryl Kulak]

This is a section we borrowed from Gerald Weinberg. The comments after the ostrich story are ours. But what a great story!

Gerald Weinberg's Fable About the Three Ostriches

Rethinking Systems Analysis and Design (Little, Brown & Company, 1982)

Three ostriches had a running argument over the best way for an ostrich to defend himself. Although they were brothers, their mother always said that she couldn't understand how three eggs from the same nest could be so different. The youngest brother practiced biting and kicking incessantly, and held the black belt. He asserted that "the best defense is a good offense." The middle brother, however, lived by the maxim that "he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day." Through arduous practice, he had become the fastest ostrich in the desert - which, you must admit, is rather fast. The eldest brother, being wiser and more worldly, adopted the typical attitude of mature ostriches: "What you don't know can't hurt you." He was far and away the best head-burier that any ostrich could recall. One day a feather hunter came to the desert and started robbing ostriches of their precious tail feathers. Now, an ostrich without his tail feather is an ostrich without pride, so most ostriches came to the three brothers for advice on how to best defend their family honor. "You three have practiced self-defense for years," said their spokesman. "You have the known-how to save us, if you will teach it to us." And so each of the three brothers took on a group of followers for instruction in the proper method of self-defense - according to each one's separate gospel. Eventually, the feather hunter turned up outside the camp of the youngest brother, where he heard the grunts and snorts of all the disciples who were busily practicing kicking and biting. The hunter was on foot, but armed with an enormous club, which he brandished menacingly as the youngest brother went out undaunted to engage him in combat. Yet fearless as he was, the ostrich was no match for the hunter, because the club was much longer than an ostrich's legs or neck. After taking many lumps and bumps, and not getting in a single kick or bit, the ostrich fell exhausted to the ground. The hunter casually plucked his precious tail feather, after which all his disciples gave up without a fight.
When the youngest ostrich told his brothers how his feather had been lost, they both scoffed at him. "Why didn't you run?" demanded the middle one. "A man cannot catch an ostrich."

"If you had put your head in the sand and ruffled your feathers properly," chimed the eldest, "he would have thought you were a yucca and passed you by."

The next day the hunter left his club at home and went out hunting on a motorcycle. When he discovered the middle brother training camp, all the ostriches began to run - the brother in the lead. But the motorcycle was much faster, and the hunter simply sped up alongside each ostrich and plucked his tail feather on the run.

That night the other two brothers had the last word. "Why didn't you turn on him and give him a good kick?" asked the youngest. "One solid kick and he would have fallen off that bike and broken his neck."

"No need to be so violent," added the eldest. "With your head buried and your body held low, he would have gone past you so fast he would have thought you were a sand dune."

A few days later, the hunter was out walking without his club when he came upon the eldest brother's camp. "Eyes under!" the leader ordered and was instantly obeyed. The hunter was unable to believe his luck, for all he had to do was walk slowly among the ostriches and pluck an enormous supply of tail feathers.

When the younger brothers heard this story, they felt impelled to remind their supposedly more mature sibling of their advice. "He was unarmed," said the youngest. "One good bite on the neck and you'd never have seen him again."

"And he didn't even have that infernal motorcycle," added the middle brother. "Why, you could have outdistanced him at a half trot."

But the brothers' arguments had no more effect on the eldest than his had had on them, so they all kept practicing their own methods while they patiently grew new tail feathers.

MORAL:  It's not know-how that counts; it's know-when.

IN OTHER WORDS:  No single "approach" will suffice in a complex world, so stay open to new information and don't fall in love with the latest fad.

Have you heard this same story, except with XP, Scrum and waterfall substituted for these ostriches' defense plans?  I know I have.

The people who are professing to use “pure XP,” “pure Scrum,” or even “pure Agile” are these ostrich's who are being hit with clubs and getting plucked. And the answer is NOT, as many books and articles profess, to somehow combine waterfall and mechanical project management with Agile.

Part of what makes each new software development idea doomed to failure is that we think we must ONLY use the new idea and forget about everything that's passed. Instead, each new process is something we can add to our toolbelt and use when its appropriate.

Now, this gets us in trouble at the same time.  It allows, let's say a waterfall project manager, to say "Oh, okay, I'll just use the parts I'm comfortable with from waterfall and incorporate little bits of Agile as I feel are necessary."

So the question becomes "Are you picking your processes based on what you know works for each situation or are you just picking what you are comfortable with and applying it as a hammer to all nails?" Unfortunately, an outside observer cannot really tell the difference.  It has to be you that decides. Can you genuinely say that you are knowledgeable about each process, whether various Agile processes, individual patterns, or whatever, and you are applying what you think will work here or there?  Or do you always tend to fall back on one particular way of doing things and assure yourself that those "other" processes are not to be messed with, because they aren't worth the trouble of learning them.

Timothy Lister, author of the venerable software classic "Peopleware," said at the Agile 2006 conference "Adapt, don't adopt."

[Cindy Casebolt]

Daryl- what a fabulous application of this story! Thanks - I'll use this analogy as we march forward at our company.

[Daryl Kulak]

Thanks Cindy.

[Ellen Gottesdiener]

really like the parable and your comments on it, Daryl. we have fanatics that want to throw out practices that work on one end, and those that totally eschew the wisdom of many agile practices. mixing the right cocktail is not always the best option either. so many things to consider (the product and its usage, the culture, the mgmt, the amount of (in)dispensible $ and time...
anyway
thanks!
~ ellen

[Daryl Kulak]

Thanks Ellen. You're right, the number of influencing factors is always enormous.

[Gene Johnson]

Daryl,

Right on the money, as usual. Current client: "We need a consistent approach across campuses, even though each campus has different culture, staff levels, and supports different areas of the value chain. We need to be consistent and limit the tailoring since we are not mature enough yet to tailor.". At least the ostrich's had 3 ways of doing things...