Tension between agile iteration and vision

[fractastical]

There in general is a tension between organizations which wish to iterate organically and organizations that have a deep embedded vision.

Interestingly many of the most novel organizational and paradigm shifting organizational styles (tribal leadership. holacracy, morning-start) have had one charismatic leader who "holds the space" for innovation (Zappos probably the most prominent example).

In general, however, the startup model interacts with a relatively small number of people who hold the vision of the organization, and this allows high group cohesion and rapid iteration on the basis of a shared vision (http://playbook.samaltman.com/)

[aquabu]

Vision and pure emergence can be in conflict. Iteration isn't in conflict in vision, it just means that the path to getting there is one step at a time. Essentially information in projects comes late, so deferring decision making until the last responsible moment gives the most informative decision.

Decisions that don't have a lot of specificity can be made early. Large scale project visions usually don't have a lot of details so there is no conflict in determining these at an early phase.

In more mature versions of lean startup for instance, it is acknowledged that the vision should be durable enough to survive validation failure. Aka it's a pivot not a a reboot.

In regards to holacracy - each nested circle has it's own purpose. The top circle is set by the leader. The leader just doesn't determine exactly how that vision will be executed. So in that sense it's like a swarm with many nested circles of purpose.

In Agile, there's also a strong distinction between continuous release of features and not having a vision. Continuous release proves progress towards an outcome by writing working software. It also reveals gaps between vision and reality faster. There is no conflict between having a product vision, quarterly milestones, prioritized epic features, and iteratively prioritized features that can deliver on the objective epics in the most efficient manner.

[fractastical]

I suppose the reason why I articulated this as I did was because I was thinking of "agile governance," not agile as applied to product development. When the agile iterative process is applied to the root nature of the governance itself, it at least opens up the possibility that the organization will depart from its founding vision. Take BackFeed as an example. With Backfeed, you ostensibly have the option to "fork" an organization at any point and create a copy of it if you think its vision isn't consistently articulated. With a normal corporate structure, instead the people who aren't in line with the vision ostensibly would need to leave the organization.