Quintessence – The Long Overdue Upgrade to Agile

We’ve laboured under the Agile yoke for more than twenty years now. As well as its other failings, Agile has choked off all innovation in the way software is developed.

We’re long overdue an upgrade, and yet there seems no game-changing innovations in sight. Might we conclude that decision-makers are content that current means are good enough to meet their needs? That breakthrough capabilities are of no interest? Or that no new breakthroughs are even possible?

It sure seems like it to me. And yet I continue to propose new, tried and tested, ground-breaking ideas. For those few who are not content to luxuriate in the prevailing status quo. Ideas like Flowchain, Prod•gnosis, the Antimatter Principle, Organisational Psychotherapy, and most recently, Quintessence.

Quintessence is that long overdue upgrade to Agile. Not a downgrade like, for example, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink abortion that is SAFe.

Nor even a next-generation Agile, which will inevitably include all the shortcomings of the existing Agile approach(es).

Radical Departure

Quintessence is the radical departure from Agile norms, based as it is on people-oriented technologies such as sociology, group dynamics, psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, anthropology, cognitive science and modern neuroscience. Technologies conspicuous by their absence from businesses everywhere.

If logic had anything to do with it, thousands of businesses would be working in the Quintessential way now. But of course logic gets nary a look-in. We human beings are creatures of habit, emotion and bias. Our inner chimps hold sway over the human part of our brain most all of the time.

I guess you’ll dismiss this post much like you’ve dimissed all my other posts on e.g. Quintessence. C’est la vie. That’s monkeys for you.

Further Reading

Peters, S. (2016). The Chimp Paradox. Vermilion, An Imprint Of Ebury Publishing.

Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub).Available at: https://leanpub.com/quintessence [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].