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Agile: Common sense or misconception?

In our many discussions  we hear the advice that we should use our common sense to tackle the problems, But how good is our common sense? Are we willing to change? Recently i had a discussion with a colleague on an agile practice. This person was not so willing to change because  the common sense dictate  otherwise.  In this fast moving world and always change constraints change is inevitable, most of time we will have to challenge and change the age old common sense to bring the continuous change/improvement.


Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, said, “[...] misconceptions easily turn into common sense. When that happens, the debate can become endless. Or, each side tried to be more outspoken than the other and things do not move ahead at all. That is why there was a time when I was constantly telling people to take a step outside of common sense and think by ‘going beyond common sense.’ Within common sense, there are things that we think are correct because of our misconceptions. Also, perhaps a big reason we do some of the general common sense things we do is that based on long years of experience, we see there are no big advantages to doing things a certain way but neither are there many disadvantages to it. ... we are all human so we’re like walking misconceptions believing that the way we do things now is the best way. Or perhaps you do not think it is the best way, but you are working within the common sense that ‘We can’t help it, this is how things are’”
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